


The Rock Bottom Job

by hamalaka



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-06 12:51:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 27,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1858698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamalaka/pseuds/hamalaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set about a year after Season 5 ends. Parker, Hardison, and Eliot have been working together successfully for about a year when things go wrong on a job. They recruit the help of Sophie and Nate to help pick up the pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

THWACK, TING! THWACK, TING!

The noise caused Parker to turn and look down the corridor behind her. A security guard, the one she had dubbed "Grouchy-pants" when they had cased the place the week before was shooting at her, his bullets bouncing off the metal pipes running along the wall. She hadn't heard any pops from the gun being fired.  _What kind of security guard uses a silencer?_ She thought.

As she turned left at the corner she heard him call out on his walkie, most likely for backup.

Parker reached up and tapped her earbud twice to take it off mute.

"Guys, we're blown, get out as soon as you can." She muted it again and took off down the hall as fast as she could. She held the briefcase full cash out in front of her so it wouldn't bang against her leg. She heard the boys respond in her ear that they were almost done.

Her exit was the loading dock just ahead of her at the end of the hall, through a locked door. She was two yards away from it when the guard's voice rang out behind her.

"Freeze!"

She skidded to a stop two feet from the door. She froze, her mind racing over all possible escape routes. She stymied her instinct to call Eliot for help. He was all the way in another wing of the building with Hardison. And Hardison was supposed to have had the trickier exit. The building they were in spanned two city blocks, Eliot would never make it in time to help her, and it would leave Hardison exposed. The digital files he was pulling from the servers were more important than the $100,000 in her briefcase.

"Turn around, drop the briefcase."

As she slowly turned, she pulled her lockpicking tools from her belt with her free hand and hid them up her sleeve.

She faced the guard. He shined a bright light in her face that made her squint. He was slowly walking up the hall towards her. Twenty feet away and closing. She couldn't make out his features with the light in her eyes.

"I said drop it, I won't ask you again." His voice was gruff and course, businesslike.

She dropped the case with a thunk. She slowly backed away from the advancing guard until she reached the door. She pulled both of her hands behind her in what she hoped was an inconspicuous way and began to pick the lock.

"You sure you don't want to just let me go?" She said. "I could make it worth your while, there's a lot of money in that briefcase."

She didn't expect him to say yes, just wanted to keep him distracted.

In her ear, she heard Eliot's voice, "How much longer, Hardison? The guards are closing in."

"Just give me 30 seconds," Hardison said.

The guard gave a short, humorless laugh. "Trying to bribe me, or stall me?"

This guy was too smart for his own good. She was seconds away from having the door open.

"If I was trying to stall you I would offer to make out with you." She gave him what she hoped was a flirty smile. The lock popped open with a soft click. Now, she had to just get through the door.

The guard was now ten feet from her, and she could see his close cropped hair cut and square jaw. He had cold eyes.

"Like I would ever make out with thieving scum like you," he said.

Hardison's voice sounded in her earbud, "I'm done. Where are you, Eliot?"

"I'm coming to you." She could hear sounds of fighting with Eliot's response.

Parker slowly turned the handle and opened the door a half inch. She saw the guard's eyes narrow.

"Hey! Stop!"

She opened it another inch, should she just throw it open all at once and push through?

"I said stop!"

She didn't hear a pop, but she saw the muzzle flash, and a second later she felt a white-hot pain tear through her abdomen. The force of the shot pushed her through the door and onto the ground of the room beyond.

She had enough piece of mind to pull her legs out of the way and slam the door shut. As she did, she saw that the bottom of the door had one of those metal bolts that attached to a hole in the floor to lock it. Without even thinking about it, she pushed the bolt down.

She rolled onto her back and let the pain wash over her. Her whole left side was on fire. Her head was spinning, and she was barely able to keep from throwing up.

She was vaguely aware of the sound of the guard pounding on the door. She could hear voices on her earbud. She tried to focus on them.

"Parker? Parker, are you there?" Hardison sounded a little panicked. "We're three minutes from our exit point, are you on the way with the van ?"

The van. She was supposed to get to the van parked outside the loading dock and drive around to the exit Eliot and Hardison would take. That was the plan. The crux of their carefully laid plan that they had spent weeks preparing.

She needed to get to the van. Could she even stand? Her limbs felt filled with lead. After what felt like an eternity, she was able to roll onto all fours. The room dipped and spun. Her clothes were wet and she saw she was kneeling in her own blood. There was no way she would be able to drive the van to the rendezvous point. But if she could just get to the van, then they wouldn't have to come looking for her.

"Parker, girl, answer me!" Hardison said.

She took a deep breath and tried to steady her voice as much as she could. She took her comm off mute.

"I got held up. I can make it to the van, but I won't make it in time to drive it around. Can you guys meet me there?"

"We can get there. Are you okay?" Eliot said.

"I . . . I got held up. See you there." She muted her comm and let out a moan. She didn't want them distracted and worrying about her. She just wanted them focused on their exit which would be even harder now. This building had a lot of well-trained guards. Her current condition was evidence of that.

She crawled over to the half flight of concrete stairs that led to the loading dock and half-fell-half-crawled down them. Then it was just ten agonizing feet to the door that she had propped open earlier in the night.

Outside the night breeze washed over her face as she made her way to the van. She reached up and opened the sliding door, the action causing a whole new wave of pain to hit her. She pushed herself up and into the floor of the van and shut the door.

She lay on her back on the floor of the van in semi-darkness, the only light coming from a few of Hardison's computer screens that he had left on. By her right hand she felt something soft and she grabbed it. Hardison's scarf. She brought it up to her nose and breathed in the familiar scent of him. She should probably use it to stop the bleeding, but she couldn't summon the energy.

She began to wonder if the guard would come around to the loading dock from another door, and she hoped the boys would find her first. Then it became hard to focus on anything but the pounding of her heart and the throbbing of her side. Her vision began to go dark, she breathed in the smell of Hardison from his scarf again. She willed herself to stay awake, but felt her mind slipping away. . .


	2. Chapter 2

"We'll go across the parking lot and make our way around behind those bushes," Eliot said.

He did a quick scan to check for any guards coming out of the front doors. He didn't think the three guards he took out had gotten the chance to radio for backup, but he could never be sure.

"Then it should be a quick shot to the loading dock. Five minutes, tops. We'll grab Parker and go."

He didn't say what he was thinking, that something didn't feel right. That something was wrong with her voice when she assured them she just got held up. He didn't voice it, because he could already see the worry on Hardison's face, and he needed him focused. As it was, Hardison didn't even respond.

"Got it?"

Hardison scowled and did his own sweep of the perimeter.

"Hardison! You got it?"

"Yeah! I got it!" Hardison sounded annoyed, but Eliot didn't have time to worry about pissing him off at the moment.

"Let's go."

They both crouched into a low run across the parking lot, Eliot taking the lead. They reached the cover of the bushes without incident. It wasn't much of a cover to be honest. It blocked them from view from the building they had just broken into, but their backs were completely exposed to the street.

They slowed to a brisk walk on the sidewalk, trying to look like a couple of pedestrians out for a stroll. However, there weren't any other pedestrians out at four o'clock in the morning, and hardly any cars. Eliot felt uneasy at being so exposed.

He heard Hardison's voice behind him and over his earbud.

"Parker, did you make it to the van? We're five minutes away."

Silence.

"Parker!"

"Her comm must be muted," Eliot said. "I can't hear anything."

The mute feature was something Eliot had insisted on Hardison adding to the earbuds after he got sick of listening to the two of them make flirty banter when they went on jobs together. He'd even had to endure listening to a heavy makeout session once when they were on recon. Never again, he had vowed.

Now the absolute silence coming from her comm was making his stomach clench.

"Eliot, man, something's wrong," Hardison said.

Eliot agreed, but he didn't say anything. He just picked up his pace and ran to the end of the block. They turned left at the corner so they could come up along the back of the building. Through the bushes he could see the van parked at the loading dock a half a block away.

He also started to hear sirens. They were blocks away, but they were coming from two directions at least and were closing in fast.

They both broke into a complete sprint over the last hundred feet. Eliot broke through the bushes first and heard Hardison crash through them right behind him.

The van was right where they had left it. Out of the corner of his eye Eliot saw Hardison slow down to look in the driver's side door where Parker should be waiting. Eliot made his way around to the passenger side.

"She's not here," Hardison said.

Eliot pulled on the handle for the sliding door and the overhead light flooded the cabin, "Well, let's stick your computer in here and we'll go get-"

She was dead. She had to be dead there was so much blood.

Eliot had seen similar amounts of blood on his buddies in combat, their lives drained away. Their bodies still and cold. But then she moved her head ever so slightly, and opened her eyes just for a second.

"Hardison!" he called.

He felt Hardison come up behind him. Heard his sharp intake of breath. Then he was being shoved out of the way as Hardison climbed into the van with her.

"No, no, no, no, no-" his friend said. "No, no, no." It sounded more like a whimper than words.

Eliot became aware suddenly of how close the sirens were. They were out of time.

"We gotta go," he said. He shut the door on them and ran around to the driver's side to slide behind the wheel.


	3. Chapter 3

Blood everywhere. You couldn't see it on her black clothes, but it shined dark red against the gray floor of the van, and in her hair, and on her skin. Everywhere.

"Hey, girl," Hardison's mouth was so dry, "Hang in there for me. Hang in there."

Her eyes were closed, her head rocking back and forth with the rhythm of the van. He lightly tapped her face with the palm of his hand, trying to get her eyes to flutter open again.

Nothing.

He swore his heart stopped beating for a second as he pressed his fingers against her neck. Seconds passed that felt like hours. He didn't know if he had his fingers in the right place, he felt nothing. He repositioned and yes, there! There was a beat, faint and erratic, but definitely there.

"Eliot, what do I do?" His voice sounded strange to his own ears.

"You've got to stop the bleeding," Eliot said. "Put pressure on the wound."

Right, he knew that. It was like he couldn't think straight.

He saw that she had one of his scarves in her right hand, and he pulled it from her grasp. Lifting up her shirt he could clearly see the bullet wound, on her left side, just under her rib cage. He balled up the scarf and pressed down as hard as he could. He really hoped she couldn't feel anything right now.

"There's still blood coming from her back," he called out desperately.

"Bullet must have been a through-and-through," Eliot said. "You have to put pressure on the entry wound and exit wound."

Hardison was vaguely aware of the sounds of sirens all around him and the sensation that Eliot was driving very fast. He put it out of his mind and focused on Parker.

He took off the shirt to the janitor's uniform he was wearing and balled it up to put it underneath her. Then he put as much pressure as he could on the scarf and hoped it was enough to create pressure on both sides.

Her eyes fluttered open and closed again. His heart leapt.

"Parker, I'm here," he grabbed her hand. "Hey, I'm here, girl. You stay with me now, ok?"

Her lips moved and formed what looked like an "H" sound. Hi? Hardison? Help? He couldn't tell. She stopped moving after that.

"How far away, man?" he said.

"Two minutes," Eliot said as he took a sharp left. "Here's the thing, the cops are right on our tail. I can get her to the hospital, but we'll probably be arrested instantly."

Hardison didn't care if he spent the rest of his life in jail, as long as Parker lived. But he knew that when she recovered she would be arrested too.

"Gain as much distance as you can," Hardison said. "Then you drop us off and keep going."

"What? No, man, I'm not going to leave you."

"Listen to me, you keep going," Hardison said. "And you call Sophie and Nate."

Eliot met his gaze briefly in the rearview mirror.

"You'll come get us," he stated. Eliot nodded.

"You know it, brother."

Two minutes later they were peeling into the emergency room parking lot. The cops a mere block away. Before the van even stopped completely Hardison was leaping out of the door of the van. As fast and as gingerly as he could he gathered Parker in his arms. She felt so small to him, and so uncharacteristically still.

The cops pulled in and Eliot peeled out before Hardison could even shut the sliding door. Two of the cop cars followed the van, and two stopped behind Hardison.

He paid them no mind as he half ran across the roundabout and towards the sliding glass doors. Trying not to jostle her but losing the scarf in the process. He was almost to the door when he heard a cop voice ring out over the parking lot.

"Freeze! Police!"

Hardison ignored the police until he heard the unmistakable sound of four guns being cocked.

He froze for a moment, and then slowly turned around.

"Don't move."

"Please," Hardison said. "Please just let me get her inside. She's dying. She needs help."

The police said nothing. The cop nearest him, a woman, shifted on her feet and stole a glance at her partner. Hardison seized on that.

"Look, you can escort me in," he said. "Just let me drop her off and then you can arrest me. I am unarmed. I don't have any weapons, I don't have anything. I just have her." She's all I have.

He could no longer tell if Parker was breathing. He was done waiting. Just as he started to turn he saw the cop nearest him lower her weapon.

"Okay," she said. "Come with me."

She went in front, her partner behind, and they went through the sliding glass doors together.

The emergency room was already a whirlwind of activity when they stepped inside. The whirlwind just seemed to change direction and swallow them up when they entered.

A gurney appeared, Parker was taken from his arms and a faceless voice rang out.

"What happened?"

"Gunshot," was all he managed to say.

"How long ago?"

"Uh . . . I don't know, maybe 20 minutes?"

The voices continued to speak to one another rapidly and almost incoherently as they wheeled her away. He watched the top of her blond head still visible in between the swarming people in scrubs.

A few snippets he managed to catch.

"Late twenties, female, GSW to the left abdomen. . .I can't find a pulse. . ."

And then they were through the double doors and the blond head was gone.

Hardison felt his arms being twisted behind his back and cold metal cuffs snapped into place.


	4. Chapter 4

Nate was jolted awake by a phone ringing on the table by Sophie's side of the bed. It took a few seconds before his foggy brain recognized the sound he was hearing. He glanced at the clock on his side of the bed: 3:47 A.M.

"Sophie," he said, when he felt her stir. "Sophie, the phone."

He heard a little gasp from her and she rolled over suddenly to grab the phone. The ringing ceased as she picked up.

"Hello?"

Nate sat up and turned on the lamp on the hotel nightstand next to him. He could barely make out a male voice gruffly saying something on the other end of the phone.

"Eliot," she said, "What-"

The voice cut her off but Nate couldn't make out what was being said. Although, he could guess. He watched Sophie's back stiffen as she listened. But she remained silent.

The three of them had left Sophie and Nate alone after they separated. It wasn't explicitly stated, but Nate assumed they could tell that the two of them wanted their space. Sophie had called every month or so to check in and Nate was happy to listen about their escapades. Their successes and fumbles. But he stayed out of the planning. Sophie liked to talk to Parker about upcoming jobs and the best approach, but Nate didn't want to tempt himself. He didn't want to get pulled in.

He hadn't liked who he was becoming, he hadn't liked the way he had been forced to think and act to get into the minds of the criminals, and that's why he had left.

He had wanted to build something else, something long lasting and fulfilling. And he thought that if he had Sophie by his side, that would be enough to figure out what that was.

He could tell that she wanted to go back, he could tell after the first month they spent in the Maldives. Just for a little vacation before they figured out their next move. But they never figured out their next move so they spent the next month in Ibiza, and so on and so on. And here they were in Cabo, tanned and relaxed and slightly lost.

"When did it happen?" Sophie said into the phone. She turned to look at him and she had her hand covering her mouth. Her eyes were wide in shock.

Nate's heart sank. The unspoken, not-explicitly-stated rule with the others is that they would let Nate and Sophie initiate contact, unless there was an emergency. Unless something went really like it used to his mind started cycling through all the worst case scenarios in his head.

"Where are you guys?" Sophie said. "Chicago, okay." Nate got up and moved to the dresser to start packing, hoping to distract his mind before it got to the really gruesome scenarios. "We'll be on the next direct flight. Hopefully we can be there by early afternoon."

She hung up the phone and turned to him. "Nate, we've got to go-" She stopped when she saw his suitcase was already half-packed.


	5. Chapter 5

_"GSW to the left abdomen. . .I can't feel a pulse."_

The words of the ER nurse replayed in Hardison's head over and over again.

He sat in the interrogation room in his white undershirt, which was covered in dried blood. They had washed his hands to fingerprint him, but hadn't bothered to give him a clean shirt. Perhaps they were using it as psychological warfare. It was working.

According to the clock on the wall to his left, it was 7:13 in the morning. Eliot would have shaken the police tail long ago and was probably already at the safe house. Sophie and Nate would be on their way soon if they weren't already. And Parker was. . .Parker was. . .

_". . . I can't feel a pulse."_

_In surgery, she's in surgery_ , he forced himself to think. Because any other option was something he couldn't bear. He couldn't bear the thought that she was lying on a cold slab in the morgue across town, marked as Jane Doe. That she had gone from the world forever while he sat here in cuffs waiting for the detective to come in.

If he hadn't lost his earbud, he could have gotten updates from Eliot. But the damn thing had squelched loudly, like it did sometimes, and the cop that was processing him had heard it and removed it. They were probably trying to trace it back to him at the moment. They wouldn't have any luck, he was sure of that.

At that moment the door opened and a stern looking woman came in. She looked to be in her forties, she wore her brown hair back in a sleek bun, and her white, button-down shirt was perfectly pressed.

"I am Detective Hassett with the Chicago PD, robbery division," she said as she sat down across from him. "Now, who are you?"

Hardison said nothing.

"Don't feel like talking? Too tired? I understand, you've had a busy night."

"I want to know the condition of the woman I was with at the hospital." Hardison said.

"You mean your accomplice?" the detective said. "Just give me her name and I'll call the hospital to check on her for you."

She pulled out her cell phone, "See? I'll do it right now."

Hardison weighed his options. Giving her their real names was out of the question. The CIA had a file on him, most likely on Parker too. He cycled through their most recent aliases in his mind. The aliases were perfect. They would lead the cops to a furnished apartment in the Loop, that looked lived-in but in fact wasn't. An apartment belonging to three roommates with boring jobs and no priors.

"Her name is Maria Grady," he said. "And mine is Kurt Ecklund."

Hardison flashed back to two months ago, when he and Parker watched "A Sound of Music" together for the first of many times. Parker had marched around the room singing "Nobody solves a problem like Maria!" for a week after.

Eliot had bitched and moaned after the tenth time listening to it that day. "Those aren't even the right words!"

"Don't bother man, I've already corrected her three times."

When he was picking their names for the next aliases, he had asked her what she wanted for hers.

"Maria, of course!"

Hardison had refused to use the name Gaylord, but had gone with a name of one of the sons for himself.

"You should give Eliot the name Gaylord." Parker had said.

"Girl, do you want him to break all my fingers?"

Then she had paused, like she was weighing giving Eliot a silly name versus his fingers being broken.

"Fine, Ralph it is," she had said.

Back in the interrogation room, Hardison almost smiled, but stopped himself. Detective Hassett might think he was being difficult. All he cared about at this moment was for her to call the hospital.

She wrote the names down carefully on her notepad. She didn't pick her phone up again.

"Hey, you said. . ." he started.

"I know what I said," she said coolly. "You get what you want, after I check out these names you gave me. I also want the name of the getaway driver. The one who evaded capture."

Hardison felt relieved at the confirmation that Eliot had gotten away. He gave the detective a cold stare. He could see now that she was playing with him. She didn't have any intention of keeping her word.

"I'm not saying anything else until you call the hospital," he said. "So until you do, you can go to hell."

It probably wasn't the best idea to completely antagonize the detective, but his frustration about being stuck here with no information poured out of him. Detective Hassett gave him a long stare, and narrowed her eyes at him. Then she got up and opened the door to speak to the officer posted outside.

"Take him to lockup," she said. "Let him stew for a few hours."


	6. Chapter 6

Parker was trying to stay in the darkness. It was warm there, and quiet. She really wanted to stay in the dark as she was, curled in a little ball. But this persistent light kept following her, trying to illuminate her hiding place in the shadows. She turned her head away from it, but the light kept flashing at her, forcing her to look at it.

The light made her brain feel fuzzy. It was hard to think. After a few moments she realized that the light in her eyes was an actual light being flashed in her eye. And her eyelid was being held open. That was uncomfortable.

She squeezed her eye shut, and then squinted them both open a bit. The fuzziness was receding and with it came pain in her left side and the realization that she was lying in a bed. The intensity of the pain was growing by the minute. She also became aware of muffled voices.

Hardison? Eliot? She thought. But no, she was pretty sure it wasn't them. That voice had an Indian accent, and that one was a woman's.

"Miss Grady?" said the male voice.

_ Who? _

"Can you hear me?"

She didn't quite have control of her mouth yet, so she grunted in response. Were they talking to her?

"My name is Dr. Kapur," said the male voice. "If you can hear me, can you squeeze my fingers?"

She felt a large hand slip between her fingers. She couldn't move her arms, but her fingers seemed to be working. She gave what she hoped was a strong squeeze.

"Good, good, Miss Grady. Now, can you wiggle your toes for me?"

That's a weird request, but she did what he asked.

Doctor. He said he was a doctor. That meant she was most likely in the hospital. She opened her eyes a slit again. The light wasn't being shined in her eyes, but the fluorescent lights on the ceiling were glaring to her.

Parker was definitely in a hospital. The pain in her side flared particularly strong, as if urging her to remember. She remembered looking into a pair of cold eyes, and then the flash from a muzzle. She remembered crawling into the van, and a scarf that smelled like Hardison.

Hardison must be here! She opened her eyes again despite the glare to look for him. His faced would be filled with worry, and Eliot would be cranky and tell her to not do that again.

But they weren't in the room. In the room were two doctors, and a nurse. And over by the doorway was a police officer. She looked down at her immobile hands. They were bound to the railings with leather restraints.

They were caught. That was why the boys weren't here. Or did they get shot too? She got a picture in her mind of the guard with the cold eyes standing over Hardison, his body lying bleeding on the cold cement.

The doctor was speaking to her, but she wasn't listening.

"What?" she said.

"I said, do you remember what happened to you?"

"Shot," she said. Forming full sentences was too exhausting.

"That's right. Now, can you tell me your full name?"

"…Uh…."

What name had he called her, Miss Grady? That was the local alias that Hardison had set up back when they were planning the job. She wracked her brain trying to remember the first name that went with that alias. Then she almost smiled, remembering her favorite character from the musical Hardison had insisted she watched. She had become attached to the shrewd nun because of the fact that she was an oddball. An outcast who never quite fit in or said the right thing, but in the end she found a place in the world, and a family that didn't ask her to change.

"Maria Grady," Parker said finally.

"Good. And who is the president of the United States?" Doctor Kapur said.

"Uh, Obama. Why?"

He gave her a little smile and patted her arm.

"Well, you experienced cardiac arrest right when you were brought in," he paused at the confused look on her face. "Your heart stopped beating."

"Oh," she didn't know how to feel about that. "For how long?"

"About ninety seconds, as far as we can tell. And when that happens, we just need to check for any lasting effects such as brain damage."

"Oh," she said again. She didn't feel brain damaged, but she didn't really know how that was supposed to feel. If Eliot were here, he would make a joke about how it wouldn't be any different from how she was before. Thinking of him and Hardison caused a pain in her chest that had nothing to do with the gunshot.

The pain in her side flared up again, it was quite distracting. She was trying to get her thoughts together, to formulate a plan, but all she could focus on was how much she hurt.

"Brain feels fine," she said and winced, "Side hurts."

"Yes, we can go over the details of your injuries more later," Doctor Kapur said, "For right now though, we've set up a morphine drip for you, all you have to do is press this button." He pressed the red button attached to a cord twice to show her and put it in her restrained hand. "You should feel the effects quickly, and you'll most likely start to feel pretty sleepy."

She did feel sleepy, and the pain was ebbing away. She wanted to kiss Dr. Kapur a little bit. Then she started giggling at the silly thought.

"The police want to ask you some questions, but it can wait until after you have another rest."

She stopped giggling at that.

She'll just take a quick nap, then she'll figure out how to get herself out of here, and get Eliot and Hardison out of wherever they are. Her eyes were too heavy to keep open, but as soon as she closed them she saw the image of Hardison shot by the cruel guard. He was bleeding from his chest and making horrible gurgling noises as he struggled to breathe. And the guard just laughed and laughed.


	7. Chapter 7

Parker was hanging outside the window of the police precinct. Hardison saw her blond head appear at the window, and she flashed him a grin.

"Parker!" Hardison practically shouted. "What are you doing here?"

She waved at him through the glass and the metal grate attached. The window was in the small hallway that ran past all of the cells. He saw her fiddle with something and a second later the window and grate were blasted off with a small explosion. A few seconds later she was through the window and detaching her rope from her harness.

"What are you doing here?" he repeated.

"I'm here to get you out of here," she said. She was working at the lock of his cell with her lockpick.

"Are you insane? This place is full of cops, who generally can hear explosions go off!"

"Don't worry, Eliot is taking care of them."

"Eliot is fighting an entire precinct of cops, singlehandedly?"

"Yeah," she said, matter-of-factly. She finished with the lock and swung the door open. "Come on!"

Something was nagging at him.

"Wait, you were shot. Why aren't you in the hospital?" he asked.

She looked at him like he was crazy, "What are you talking about? We gotta go, come on!"

That's when he saw the differences. Her hair wasn't the right color blond. Her smile not quite the same. The window she had come through was way bigger than what he remembered.

He was dreaming. This pale imitation was not Parker.

"You're not. . ." he started to say, when there came a loud CLANG, and he woke with a jolt. He was lying on the bench of the holding cell, somehow he had fallen asleep.

The cell next to him had two men in it who had earlier been speaking to each other in Spanish. Now they were silent as they looked at the cop coming down the hall.

It was the cop from the hospital, the one that had led him into the emergency room. He sat up as she came over to his cell. Officer Suarez, her nametag said. She gestured for him to come closer, and he leaned in close to the bars.

"I just wanted you to know that your girl is alive," she said.

"What?" he said, barely daring to breathe.

"I overheard Detective Hassett talking on the phone with the hospital. She's in the ICU recovering from surgery."

"Are you sure?" he asked, not letting himself believe it.

"That's what I heard."

Hardison could feel tears welling in eyes.

"When the detective talks to you again, pretend you don't know, okay? Or else you'll get me in trouble," she said.

"Thank you," he could not express to her with those two words everything he owed her.

She gave him a little smile and nodded. As she turned to go, one of the men in the next cell said something to her in Spanish, in what sounded like a lewd tone. She spat something back at him, and walked out.


	8. Chapter 8

Eliot glanced at the large computer monitor that hung on the wall of their Chicago safe house for the 20th time. It showed the same display that he had pulled up hours ago when he had first gotten home. It was the monitoring program for their comms.

PARKER: OFFLINE

HARDISON: OFFLINE

The red flashing lights next to their names made him clench his jaw. It was like an ache in his gut that wouldn't go away. His team was scattered, cut-off and unable to communicate. One of them was fighting for her life, the other was probably losing his mind.

And what was he doing? He was sitting here useless, pacing a hole in the floor.

At least he was awake now. After he called Sophie, he had laid down on the couch to rest just for ten minutes. He had awoken with a jolt three hours later and immediately cursed himself for his weakness. He needed to come up with a plan, not catch some z's.

After that he had called the hospital, pretending to be a reporter writing a story on the break-in, and asked for the status of the "injured intruder". He had to wait as the nurse pulled up Parker's information in the system, his heart pounding.

"Her status is listed as 'undetermined'," the nurse had said.

"What does that mean?"

"Sir, privacy laws prohibit me from divulging any information about a patient other than their status," she had said.

Eliot had grumbled a curse word or two and hung up. Useless. That was hours ago, and he still hadn't been able to think straight enough to come up with any ideas that would be useful. Worse, he was starting to feel the fatigue set in again. After all the adrenaline that had pumped through him, and the long night before that, three hours of restless sleep was not enough for his body to recharge.

But this wasn't the time to sleep. An idea came to him. He crossed the large open living space and entered the bathroom. Stripping naked, he started the shower and turned the water temperature as cold as it would go. Without hesitating he stepped into the shower.

Eliot inhaled sharply as the cold water hit his skin. The shock to his system instantly made him feel more alert. He let the water run over him, washing away the sweat and dirt from last night. He closed his eyes to let the water run over his face, and instantly flashed back to the sight that awaited him when he opened the van door. It hit him like a freight train. The door sliding open. The overhead light turning on and flooding the van with light. The figure in black lying in a pool of blood.

His eyes shot open and he immediately turned to stare at the bright bathroom light, trying to burn the image from his brain. But then he couldn't help playing Hardison's words over in his head. His friend's voice strained and tense. "No, no, no ,no ,no . . . Eliot, what do I do?"

_ I don't know what to do, man. _ Eliot sighed and turned off the water. This wasn't helping the way he intended. He dried off with a towel and wrapped it around his waist, flinching as he discovered a large bruise on his hip from one of the guards. It was not the only bruise, he knew. Those guards were unexpectedly well-trained, and a few of them put up quite a fight.  _ Well-trained and trigger-happy _ _,_ he thought as Parker popped into his head again.

It was one of the things about the job that was bothering him. One of many things that didn't add up.

The door buzzer interrupted his thoughts. He walked out of the bathroom and over to the front door. He glanced at the monitor Hardison had set up the first day. Nate and Sophie were standing at the front door to the building. Nate found the camera right away and stared right at it. Eliot couldn't help but smile at the sight of the two familiar figures. Eliot buzzed them in, unlocked the front door, and moved quickly to his bedroom to get dressed.

He was pulling a t-shirt over his head when he heard the heavy front door open and Sophie called out, "Hello?" He felt his stomach do a little flip. Why was he nervous to see them? He dried his hair off with the towel and ran his fingers through it quickly. He found himself looking in the mirror while he did so and stopped himself.  _ They don't care how your hair looks! _

"Anybody here?" Nate called. "Eliot?"

Eliot dropped the wet towel on the floor and walked out to meet them in the entry area by the kitchen.

"Hey," Eliot said and they turned him.

Nate reached out to shake his hand, "Eliot."

Eliot shook it, "Nate."

Sophie gave him a quick hug and a sad little smile, "It's good to see you."

"You too," he said automatically, he couldn't think of anything else to stay. They stood there in awkward silence for a moment, Sophie looking intently at him.

"Eliot, this wasn't your fault," she said. "You know that, right?"

"Yeah, thanks," he grumbled, uncomfortable. It was nice of her to say, even if he wasn't able to believe it.

"Any word on Parker?" Nate said, and he dropped his bag near the hall closet and made his way into the apartment.

"No, I called the hospital around 9 o' clock but they wouldn't tell me anything," Eliot said.

"Ah, that's because you need to work on your short con," Sophie said. "Especially over the phone."

She got a look on her face that Eliot had seen when she used to talk to her acting students. "See  your charm works best when you get to flash one of those smiles and use those baby blue eyes. But your voice, there's no finesse, no mystery. You've got to own the character so much that you can express everything there is to know about them simply through what they say and how they say it. That's what is so tricky about voice acting . . ."

She trailed off when she caught the look of annoyance on Eliot's face.

"Sorry. I haven't had anyone to direct in almost a year."

"Well you're welcome to give it a try if you think you could do better," he pulled up the hospital's number on the encrypted phone and held it out to her. He glanced at Nate, who just gave him a shrug.

"All right, then," she said and took the phone. After a few seconds Eliot could hear someone on the other line pickup.

Nate pulled him aside well Sophie continued to talk.

"And Hardison, what do you know about him?" Nate asked.

"According to the police records he was taken to the local police precinct, here," Eliot pointed to the map spread out on the table in front of them.

Nate raised his eyebrows at him, "You hacked into the police records?"

"Why is that so surprising?" Eliot grumbled, "I can hack a little."

Nate held his hands up as if to say, whoa there.

"Okay, I'm sorry."

"Anyway, he's being held for questioning, no charges have been filed for him or his alias. They most likely are trying to get him to tell them what we were really after, and maybe to give me up. They will probably hold him for the maximum allowed before they charge him."

"Right, so the longest they are allowed to hold him is 24 hours," Nate said. "Then they'll need to charge him and take him to a bail hearing. Now, it's Saturday, which means the earliest bail hearing he'll get is Monday. It should actually be a pretty simply process to get him out, if you think his alias will hold up until Monday."

"The aliases are good," Eliot said. "They should hold up for both Hardison and Parker."

"Good," Nate said. "We are actually going to use the system to our advantage. They'll charge him with robbery, which is a nonviolent crime, so he'll be able to post bail. Once he does, he can walk out on his own accord and we'll be long gone by the time his trial date comes up."

"That almost seems too easy," Eliot said. Why didn't he think of it?

"Sophie?" Nate said. She had hung up the phone and turned to them with a little smile on her face.

"Parker is stable," she said. Eliot let out a breath he didn't even realize he had been holding. "She is out of surgery and was awake and talking earlier."

"She's got to be wondering what happened to us," Eliot said. "And Hardison is probably losing his freaking mind worrying about her."

"We've got to figure out a way to restore communications with them," Sophie said.

"I've got a plan," Nate said.

Eliot smiled, it was almost like old times


	9. Chapter 9

Parker was living in a perpetual haze. Fog and pain were her only constants. Dreams flitted in and out of her head, quick and strange and disturbing. But the pain was always there, as was the fog in her mind that kept her from being able to think.

She felt as if she was underwater in a sea made of fog, struggling to break to the surface and to the sunlight a few yards above her. Every time she neared the surface, she was pushed back down by a current, and forced to start back at the bottom. A few times she got close; so close she could hear voices, and feel hands touching her. Then the fog closed in around her again, the voice disappeared, and the dreams started again.

This time she was determined to escape the fog. Something familiar was nagging at her mind and she knew whatever it was would come to her as soon as she reached the surface. She began to try to kick and swim to the surface but learned pretty quickly that it didn't do any good. The fog was  in her mind so she needed to  use her mind. She did her best to concentrate on small amount of light above her. She focused on it and willed herself to get there.

The light grew brighter and the fog around her seemed to thin. It was working. She concentrated as hard as she could. As the surface drew closer and closer, the pain she was constantly surrounded by also grew stronger and stronger. She had forgotten about this part. But she wasn't going to stop when she was this close. She began to be able to hear a voice, a soft voice murmuring nearby.

A familiar flowery perfume filled her nostrils as the last of the fog seeped away and she opened her eyes. As her eyes adjusted to the brightness Parker remembered that she was in the hospital. That meant the fog she was battling was most likely the doctors sedating her to keep her asleep.

_ Where do they get off deciding whether or not I should be awake? _ she thought. She opened her mouth to tell the nurse with the soft voice to leave her alone, but stopped. The voice didn't belong to a nurse, it belonged to someone that Parker hadn't seen in almost a year.

"Sophie," she said, though it came out as a whisper. Sophie looked up when she heard her name. A huge smile spread across her face as she locked eyes with Parker, and Parker found her own eyes welling up with tears. Her mind still wasn't completely free of the fog, and she couldn't deduce why Sophie was here, and why she was wearing blue scrubs, but she couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of relief. Sophie had come. Everything was going to be okay.

Sophie leaned forward in the chair she was sitting in and pushed Parker's hair behind her ear.

"Hey there, Parker, love," she said, and the affection Parker heard in her voice made even more tears spring embarrassingly to her eyes. She tried to wipe them away but then she remembered her hands were still bound.

"What are you doing here?" Parker asked. She tried to put some affection in her own voice, but didn't really know how. She thought it came out sounding slightly whiny, but Sophie smiled again, and her eyes were glistening a little as well, so maybe it worked.

"Are you joking?" Sophie said, "Where else would I be? I've been staking out your room in different disguises all day, listening to your doctors. And now I've been trying to decipher your chart."

She held up a clipboard with a stack of papers on it that she had been reading.

"I don't like my doctors," Parker said, remembering the fog, "They make me sleep when I don't want to."

"That's because when you woke up for the second time on Friday you broke out of your restraints and tried to walk out of here," Sophie said.

Parker remembered that, she was convinced that something awful had happened to Hardison, and she needed to get to him.

"They drugged me because they don't want me to escape?"

"The police don't want you to escape," Sophie said, "Dr. Kapur sedated you because he spent almost ten hours patching up your liver and kidney and didn't want to have to do it all over again. Seriously though, Parker, he's a good doctor, we checked him out. You need to listen to him so you can get better."

"We?" Parker said, her heart fluttering. "Who's we?"

"Eliot and Nate and I."

"Where's Hardison?"

Parker noticed Sophie pause.

"Sophie, where is he? Tell me right now." She sat up straighter in the bed, the movement causing a new wave pain to crash over her.

"Calm down," Sophie said. "He's been arrested. He's in police custody, but he's okay."

Parker felt herself relax, but she noticed Sophie looking at her in concern.

"I kept having a dream that Hardison was shot by that guard, too" Parker tried to explain. "I dreamed it over and over again. I dreamed it so much I thought that I was remembering what actually happened. He was dying and I couldn't get to him because my stomach was on fire and I couldn't move."

Parker took a deep breath as the familiar image entered her mind again. Sophie took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

"It was just dream, Parker," she said. "You were the only one shot by the guard. Hardison carried you into the hospital and was arrested. Eliot got away in the van and called Nate and I. They're both okay, they're just worried about you."

Parker wanted to believe her, but the dream and the fog still had a hold on her.

"In fact," Sophie said, and her hand went up to tap her ear, "Nate, where are you? Parker's awake."

She paused for a minute, listening.

"Okay, let me know."

"In fact, what?" Parker said.

"Hmm?"

"You said, 'In fact'," Parker said impatiently, "In fact, what?"

Sophie leaned over and began to remove the leather restraint on her right hand.

"You have to promise me that you will stay calm and relaxed and that you won't move," Sophie said as she finished freeing Parker's hand. Parker resisted the urge to reach over and unfasten the left one herself, she assumed Sophie wouldn't take that as proof that she could sit still.

"I promise," Parker said, and Sophie freed her other hand.

"I'm going to have to put these back on after I leave. Right now your nurse is on her lunch break, so we don't have much time. But I thought, if you're up for it, you would like a little treat."

Parker had a feeling she knew what the treat was. She nodded and tried to hide her excitement so Sophie wouldn't think she was getting her too worked up.

"How is your pain?" Sophie asked, sounding a lot like one of her real nurses. "Do you want me to hit the morphine button for you?"

"Yes – I mean, no."

Sophie raised her eyebrows at her.

"It hurts, but I don't want more morphine right now," Parker said. "I don't want to be loopy when . . . when I –"

_ When I get to talk to Hardison. _

Parker held out her hand expectantly. Sophie looked at her for a second, surprised, then gave a little laugh and pulled something out of her pocket.

Sophie dropped the familiar little object in her hand. Parker gave a happy sigh and slipped the earbud into her right ear, just as she had done hundreds of times before.

_ I feel better already , _ she thought.


	10. Chapter 10

Hardison was shoved rather unceremoniously into the chair in one of the interrogation rooms. The burly officer then locked his hands into the cuffs attached to the metal table and without a word went to stand at the door.

"What is this?" Hardison said. "Another chit-chat with the boss lady?"

The room was a lot smaller than the ones Detective Hassett had interrogated him in over the past two days. There was no two-way mirror, and no cameras or recording equipment. Just ugly brown carpeted walls and the beat up set of table and chairs.

"Your lawyer is here," the officer said.

And before Hardison had a chance to ask him what he meant the door opened and Nate walked in.

"Na – "

"Please to meet you, Mr. Ecklund," Nate said loudly to cover up Hardison's slip. "I am Chet Buckley, I will be representing you."

Hardison quickly shut his mouth, which had fallen open in surprise. He knew Eliot said he was going to call Sophie and Nate for help, but it still threw him to see their old ringleader stride in, dressed in a horrible brown plaid suit like he was in the middle of a con.

Nate looked at the officer at the door.

"Now if you don't mind leaving us. Attorney-client privilege."

The officer looked Nate up and down once and went out, shutting the door loudly as he went.

"Nate, man, I am glad to see you."

He held out his hand as much as he could and Nate gave it a shake. Hardison then made a fist, intending for Nate to bump it with his own, but Nate just give him a look.

"No, I'm not doing that."

"Sorry," Hardison said, smiling a little. He hadn't changed.

"So, it's quite the pickle you've gotten yourself into," Nate said as he sat down across from him.

"You noticed, huh?"

"Let's talk about the plan to get you out of here," Nate said. "It's actually really straightforward, we're just going to wait until your bail hearing tomorrow–"

"Nate, I'm sorry but I don't care about this right now," Hardison said. "I'll be fine for a little while. I want to know about Parker. Is she okay? Is she awake? Is she asking for me?"

"No I haven't seen her. She's under guard at the hospital. And as for the rest of your questions . . ." Nate reached into his pocket. "Well, see for yourself."

And before Hardison could react Nate reached up and slipped something into his ear.

"What the –"

He figured out what it was a second before a familiar voice spoke in his ear.

"Hardison?" Parker said.

Hardison's heart felt like it jumped into his throat. He tried to speak but his voice caught. Nate gave him a little smile and stood up.

"You two have five minutes," he said, pulling his earbud out and leaving through the door.

"Hardison?" Parker said again, her voice sounded unsteady to him, quieter and more timid than he was used to, but it was still the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

"Hey, mama," he managed to get out.

"Are you okay?"

"Am I okay? Parker, forget about me, are you okay?"

"Yes, I mean, I think so. Sophie was listening to the doctors and she said they think I will be able to recover completely."

The tight ball of dread that had been clenched in his stomach for the last couple of days began to loosen.

"Sophie's there?" he said.

"Yeah. She took out her earbud, though."

"Nate too. I think they're trying to give us privacy."

"I guess that means Eliot's not listening. Eliot? Eliot! Shame, I wanted to say hi."

"They'll be time for that later, Parker," Hardison said. "I just wanted to say, I . . ."

He sighed, what was wrong with him? Hadn't he spent the last two days going over and over again in his head all the things he wanted to say to her when her spoke to her again? It all sounded so cliché now.

"You almost died."

"I know," she said, even more quietly.

"Your heart stopped," he said.

"How did you know that?"

The voice of the ER doctor played in his head again, " I can't find a pulse."

"I was there. They wheeled you away, and I thought I would never see you again."

He was trying hard to keep it together.

"It's beating now," she said, and then, "I'm sorry I made you worry."

Worry, now there's an understatement. He took a deep breath. He could tell he was making her uncomfortable. She wasn't equipped to handle this type of stuff, hell, who was?

"I woke up and I didn't know where you were," she said. "And no one would tell me what had happened to you and I was alone. I thought you had been killed and that no one would tell me because they thought I would freak out. I dreamed that you died so many times. I . . ."

She sounded like a lost little girl, how he would give anything to wrap his arms around her. To pull her close and breathe in her scent and make her forget whatever made her sound like that.

"I was worried about you too," she continued. "And Hardison, I . . . I lo–"

Hardison was transported back to that day in the bar in Boston, with the shards of the broken bottle splayed across the table, and the battle raging on her face as she struggled to express her feelings. He smiled a little.

"Let me guess," he said. "You love pretzels?"

Parker gave what sounded like a little snort.

"Exactly, pretzels, and well . . . you. I love you."

Hardison sucked in his breath. He had known she loved him, she had shown it to him in a thousand different smiles, and happy sighs, and kisses, and Star Trek marathons. But he had never thought she would actually say it. He was glad no one was around to see him grinning like an idiot.

"I love you, too."

"I know, you tell me all the time," she said, matter-of-factly, and she was right.

"Right," he said, "Silly me. Sorry."

"And do remember that song in  The Sound of Music ?" she said. "The one where Maria and that Gaylord guy are singing to each other in the gazebo about how they must have done something good in their childhood to deserve each other? I feel like that too. Every bad thing that happened to me and every mistake that I made is made good because it set me on the path that led to you. And Eliot and Nate and Sophie, but mostly, you."

There was a pause as Hardison tried to figure out how to respond.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It seems like the painkillers have lowered my inhibitions a little."

"It's okay, Parker," he said. "You don't ever have to apologize for sappy word vomit."

"Oh crap, we made Sophie cry."

"What?! She's listening?"

"Well, she took her earbud out but she's still in the room."

"Tell her if any part of this conversation gets back to Eliot I will . . . I don't know, make up something mean," Hardison said, he could imagine the crap Eliot would give him and Parker if he could hear them now.

"Hardison says that if you tell Eliot about this he will set fire to your Jimmy Choos."

He heard Parker giggle a little, and that ball in his stomach unclenched a little more.

"She looks scared, I think we're safe," Parker said.

"So what do we have to do to get you better?" he said.

"I have to sleep a lot, I think," she said. "I do feel tired all the time, but I don't like sleeping. Although, now that I know you're okay, my dreams will probably be happier."

"Promise me you'll sleep, and do whatever else the doctor's tell you."

She sighed.

"Parker."

"I promise," she said. "Promise me you'll come home."

"Of course, I–"

The door opened and Nate sauntered in again with a cup of coffee in his hands.

"Nate and I are going to figure out how to get me out of here right now."

"Okay," she said. "Sophie has to go. And I think I'm going to go back to sleep now."

"You sleep, baby girl," he said. "Things will be better when you wake up."


	11. Chapter 11

Eliot grabbed a beer out of the fridge at the safe house. He didn't really want one, but he needed something to do while he and Sophie waited for Nate to get back.

"So how did she look?" he asked as he popped the bottle cap off and threw it in the sink.

"She looked . . ." Sophie started, "She looked weak, but she's still Parker. She was ready to try and walk out of there even though she could barely hold her head up."

Sophie's voice was filled with, something, guilt, or sorrow, or worry, Eliot couldn't tell. Hell, if she was feeling anything like him, it was probably all three.

She glanced back at him and gave him a little smile. Eliot didn't feel much like smiling at the moment.

The door opened and Nate walked in still wearing the ugly brown suit they had found at the thrift shop.

"How did you get in here without buzzing the front door?" Eliot said.

"I took your key," said Nate.

"Of course you did."

"Anyway, Hardison's in a much better mood now after the visit, and he understands the plan. It seems like everything's right on track."

Nate loosened his tie as he spoke, gave Sophie a quick kiss, and went to stand in front of the screen.

"We need you to take us through the plan, Eliot."

"The plan?"

"The one that went wrong," Nate said, almost apologetically. "We need to know about your target, your prep, your approach, and . . . what you think went wrong."

Eliot clenched his jaw. That sounded decidedly not fun.

Eliot cleared his throat awkwardly. There was a reason Hardison was the one who usually did this, the kid liked to hear himself talk. Eliot was distinctly uncomfortable in this role.

Sophie gave him an encouraging smile.

"Fine," he said finally. He moved over to the controls for the screen and began fiddling with them to pull up the information. He clicked on the wrong folder twice and started grumbling under his breath about Hardison purposely making his files hard to find when came across the right one and pulled up the schematics to the building, as well as a picture of the mark.

"The target was Richard H. Liddick," Eliot began, indicating the picture of the man on the screen. He was middle aged, with dark grey hair and an imposing stature.

"He was the CEO of USA Bank during the 2007 economic collapse. There is evidence that he pushed people in his company to trick, bully, and manipulate customers into taking on high-cost-high-risk mortgages that they couldn't afford. One of many practices that led to the housing bubble collapse. His bank received bailout money and Liddick was given a nice, fat bonus."

"He has now moved on to run other financial stuff, investment firms and hedge funds, mostly based here in Chicago. The building that we broke into early Friday morning was the Thornton building, one of Liddick's main office complexes. We were looking for evidence that Liddick was running a Ponzi scheme."

"I got Hardison into the server room, here," Eliot indicated the northwest corner of the building, bottom level. "We went in as janitorial staff and snuck in through a service exit. Parker went in through the southwest corner by the loading dock, she then entered the vents and came out here."

He indicated the set of storage rooms on the bottom level.

"She cracked the safe no problem, but she must've ran into a guard on the way back, got cornered and . . ."

"So . . . what do you think went wrong?" Nate said carefully.

You mean, which one of us made a mistake? Eliot thought.

"The guards," Eliot said.

"What do you mean?" Sophie asked.

"We spent three days casing the place last week. We checked guard rosters and rotations. The guards that were there last week were small potatoes. They were either kids just out of school or retired beat cops. There were never more than five guards on shift at the same time, and the deadliest weapon they carried was pepper spray."

"But on Friday that wasn't the case?" Sophie said.

"On Friday I clocked six guards in our part of the building alone. I took three of them out. And they could fight, some were ex-special forces."

"And suddenly they were armed with guns," Nate said. "Which, with Chicago's gun laws, is no small feat."

"So either he was tipped off that you were coming," Sophie said, "Or something extra sensitive got moved to that building after you cased it."

Eliot thought for a moment. "It couldn't be the first one. If he was tipped off that we were coming, why wouldn't he just call the police and have us arrested as soon as we entered? No, I think you're right, Sophie. Something is in the building that wasn't there before."

"Something that Liddick would kill to protect," Nate said.

I should have noticed that the guards had been upgraded. Eliot thought. I should have noticed and pulled the plug.

"What was in the safe?"

"We don't know, Parker was looking for any documents or loose cash that could incriminate Liddick. She said over the comms that she got some cash, but she didn't have it with her when we found her. She must've had to leave it behind."

"And what was on the files the Hardison pulled from the servers?" Nate asked.

"I don't know, it's all encrypted. We need Hardison to crack it."

"We can get him to decrypt it tomorrow after we get him out," Nate said. "There's a chance that the information on the servers is what Liddick was so desperate to protect."

Eliot nodded.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sophie jump in her chair as if she had been shocked.

"Good god, I forgot I was still wearing this."

Her hand went to her ear, "What?"

Nate and Eliot exchanged confused glances.

"Okay, hold on," Sophie said. She pulled an earbud out of her ear and held it out to Eliot.

"It's Parker. She's asking for you."

"What is she still doing with an earbud?" Nate asked. "I thought we agreed it was best to take them back so the police wouldn't find them."

"She's bedridden and in the ICU," Sophie said. "I don't think the police are going to be searching her anytime soon. And I made her promise she wouldn't let it keep her from resting."

"So she wore you down," Nate said with a smile.

"Pushover," Eliot said, and he took the earbud from her.

"Hi Eliot!" Parker's voice said in her ear.

"Hi, you," he said gruffly. He moved out onto the balcony and shut the door behind him. The sounds of the city and the April breeze washed over him.

"I convinced Sophie to let me keep the earbud."

"Yeah, I gathered that," Eliot said. "Can I help you with something?" It came out harshly, but Eliot didn't really mean it. He was just thrown from hearing her voice.

She didn't seem to notice his bluntness, "Not unless you can speed up the healing process for me."

Eliot felt his jaw clench.

"Are you in a lot of pain?"

"I've had worse," she paused, "Well, no, I haven't really. But I guess that's just something people say, right?"

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Eliot thought.

"But I wanted to talk to you," she began. "I might not be able to read people like Sophie, and some people will always make no sense to me. But if there's one thing I've learned from working with you all these years, it's that . . . well, you're blaming yourself for me getting shot, aren't you?"

Eliot's jaw was clenched so tight, he couldn't respond if he wanted to. After a long while, it was clear Parker wasn't going to continue. Eliot took a deep breath.

"That's because it was my fault, Parker," he said.

"Well, no, It wasn't," she said. "It was my idea to split up, I thought I could sneak by unnoticed. And you're only one person, Eliot. If you had gone with me you would have left Hardison exposed and he probably would have gotten shot."

Eliot didn't have a good response.

"The truth is, it was too big of a job for just the three of us," she said. "You warned me, remember? But I thought we could handle it."

"Assigning blame isn't going to help anything."

"You're right," she said. "So stop assigning it to yourself."

Eliot sighed. She had a point.

"And besides," she said. "You got me to the hospital in time."

_Barely._

"You had my back, and you had Hardison's, and I just wanted to say thanks."

"Damn, Parker, when did you get all insightful?" he asked.

"I don't know, maybe it's all the Dr. Phil reruns I've been stuck watching in here."

Eliot chuckled a little.

The balcony door opened and Sophie stuck her head out.

"Tell her to go to sleep or I'll come take the earbud back," Sophie said shouting in the direction of Eliot's ear so Parker could hear.

"Okay, I promise, I'm falling asleep right now as we speak," Parker said, even though Eliot knew she was lying.

"She said she promises she will," Eliot told Sophie, and Sophie went back inside.

"Eliot?"

"Yeah?"

"Will you leave the earbud in?" Parker said, her voice getting small, "I don't want to be alone when I wake up."

"Okay," he said.

He liked the idea of having her voice in his ear, a reaffirmation that she was okay.

"I'll make sure you're not alone."


	12. Chapter 12

Nate paced the hall of the courthouse Monday morning, wearing another cheap suit and carrying an empty briefcase. He glanced at his watch, it was still slightly early. Hardison's hearing didn't start for another five minutes, and there were a lot of other people who would go ahead of him. Still, Nate thought it was weird that the police hadn't brought him yet.

He glanced into the courtroom through the door that was propped open. Around twelve other people we already present, waiting for their bail hearing to start, some with lawyers, some without.

That was when he heard multiple pairs of footsteps coming around the corner.  Finally, he thought. But it wasn't Hardison. Two officers were escorting two Hispanic men down the hall, both of them wearing identical scowls on their faces.

Something caught Nate's eye and he started toward the officers.

"Nate, is he there?" Eliot's voice came over his comm. Eliot had wanted to come with him to the hearing, to make sure that everything went off without a hitch, but Nate had explained that his presence made things too complicated. There was an APB out on him and the building was crawling with cops. Besides, it was such a simple plan.

Nate tapped his comm twice to take it off mute, "Standby."

He muted it again and walked over to the officers.

"Excuse me," he said, and they stopped and eyed him suspiciously. "You're from the ninth precinct?"

He indicated to their badges. The officer closest to him nodded.

"I have a client coming in from there for this hearing as well, Kurt Ecklund?"

"Stevens and McKeller were bringing him," the officer said, brushing past him, "They should already be inside."

His trouble senses had become alert the moment he saw these officers, and now they started clanging in alarm. Something was wrong.

He stepped in front of the officers again.

"Well, trust me, they're not."

The officer nearest him looked at him and sighed. He had an honest face, young and earnest.

"Okay, wait here, I'll call and check on them."

As they led the two men inside the officer pulled out a cell phone. Thirty seconds later, the officer came back out alone, and he was hanging up his phone, frowning. Nate's stomach flipped, and he swallowed hard.

"What–" Nate started to say, but the officer held up a hand to stop him. He spoke into the two-way radio on his shoulder.

"Fifty-five, please advise, what is your location? Over."

Nothing.

"Officers Stevens and McKeller, please advise, what is your location? Over."

No response.

The young officer's partner returned, having turned their charges over to the bailiff.

"Sweeney, what's wrong?"

Officer Sweeney looked at him, "Do you have Stevens' number?"

His partner nodded.

"Call him."

Sweeney pulled out his phone and started dialing what Nate assumed was McKellar's number. Nate was trying to keep his mind from jumping to the worst possible scenarios, but it was already there.

"Straight to voice mail."

Sweeney nodded, "Same here."

"What's going on?" Nate asked, trying to keep the concern in his voice to a level appropriate for an attorney talking about his client.

"Dispatch said they last called in when they were leaving the precinct," Sweeney said. "They never called in that they arrived. And they left before us so they should have been here."

Sweeney's partner was on the phone again, with dispatch it sounded like.

"Well, they're not here, so where are they?"

Sweeney looked lost, he opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it again. Sweeney's partner got off the phone and came back over to them.

"Dispatch says their transponder has been disabled, we can't track their location," he said. "I advised them of the situation and they're sending units this way. Until more information is gathered, this is being branded a prisoner escape."

Nate shook his head slightly. Brand it whatever you want, Hardison wouldn't try and escape the custody of two armed police officers when the team had a foolproof and simple plan to get him out.

The officers' attention was on each other at the moment, and their back was to him. That was good. He needed to slink away, or they would want to interview him about what he knew and he would be stuck here all day.

Nate took a few steps back, trying to look casual. When a group of people passed, he did his best to blend with them. He turned the corner and separated from them, taking the stairs down two at a time.

"Eliot," he said into his comm as he made his way out the front door.

"What?"

"We have a problem. "I think Liddick has some dirty cops on his payroll. They took Hardison."


	13. Chapter 13

_"I think Liddick has some dirty cops on his payroll. They took Hardison."_

Sophie heard it over the earbud as she pulled the rental car into the hospital parking lot. She froze with her hand on the doorknob.

"What?!" Eliot's voice exploded in her ear. "What do you mean they took Hardison?"

"The officers that were supposed to bring him here never showed, they disappeared en route. Their transponder is mysteriously turned off and so are their cell phones."

"Oh my God," Sophie said, bringing a hand to her mouth. "Nate, what do you think they want with him?"

"Parker's not listening on the comms right now, right?" Nate asked.

"No, the battery died, I was going to bring her a new earbud right now."

"Okay good, so she doesn't know Hardison's missing, and we need to keep it that way."

"What do you want me to do, lie to her?" Sophie said, her voice coming out higher than normal. She took a deep breathe to calm herself. Just when things were going their way, it all got shot to hell again.

"If Parker knew he was missing, she would try to do something drastic, like walk out of there to go find him. And you said so yourself, according to her chart, any significant movement at all could reopen the injury."

"He's right, Sophie," Eliot said. "I don't like it either, but it's for the best."

Sophie watched a group of women in the scrubs standing in the plaza outside of the hospital chatting on their break. They seemed so carefree, was her life ever going to be like that? _Would you be satisfied if it was?_

"Okay," she said. "She's going to be twice as mad when she eventually finds out that we lied to her."

"We'll have Hardison back by then, so she'll have to forgive us," Nate said. Sophie could here he was using the voice he used when talking to their clients. Trying to instill hope, false or otherwise.

"Eliot, I'll be back in ten minutes and we can figure this out. Sophie–"

"Yeah, I know, keep her distracted."

She took her earbud out and put it in the pocket of the scrubs she was wearing, along with the earbud she was going to give Parker. She would get updated from the boys later, she didn't want to have to pretend everything was fine when she was hearing in her ear that it clearly wasn't.

She clipped on the ID badge she had lifted her first day here and went into the hospital. Up on the third floor she kept her head down as she passed the nurses' station, in case anyone recognized her from last time. A quick glance showed her that the two nurses that had been taking care of Parker were sitting at the nurses' station, doing paperwork, they didn't look like they would be moving anytime soon.

She went to the door at the end of the hall and flashed the badge at the bored police officer stationed outside of Parker's room. He nodded and let her through. Sophie grabbed the chart hanging outside the door and went in.

She was asleep, Sophie was relieved to see. Sophie snuck in quietly and settled herself into the chair next to the bed. Parker had a little more color in her cheeks, and her sleep seemed less troubled. Sophie could see that her arm restraints had been removed, and she had been turned onto her right side, propped up by a pillow behind her back.

Sophie knew that it was to prevent bedsores, but for some reason it bothered her. She wasn't able to connect the image of Parker, so active and energized, with the image of an invalid, getting the same treatment as the elderly and chronically bedridden.

"This isn't where you deserve to be," Sophie whispered to her sleeping friend.

She sighed and started flipping through the chart for any new information. There was a lot of things that Sophie didn't understand, but she kept seeing the words "improving" and "stabilized" so she knew that Parker was on the mend. Under recommendations for continued care the doctor wrote, "Continued bed rest and monitoring in the ICU for a minimum of two weeks."

That meant they had at least two weeks before they had to get her out of here. Hopefully more. At the moment though it was hard to think of anything past the fact that Hardison was missing. Any plan that Sophie began to think of for Parker's escape would start with Hardison hacking into the Department of Correction's system. But she could think no further. What if Hardison wasn't found in time or . . . in one piece. What if that plan, and every plan in the future, had to be made without a hacker? Sophie shuddered.

"Hey," Sophie heard a soft voice say. She looked up to see Parker smiling at her. Parker's eyes seemed to be searching her face, and her smile faltered a little.

"Everything okay?"

Sophie forced a smile on her face. She needed to stop thinking about worst case scenarios, she needed to keep her composure for Parker's sake.

"Of course. How are you feeling today?"

"Okay, considering," Parker said. "Mostly bored out of my mind. The most exciting thing that happened to me was yesterday I got a sponge bath. So at least I smell good. Well, better than before."

Sophie smiled.

"But there's not much we could do about my hair," Parker said. Her hair did seemed to be somewhat of a mess, Sophie noticed, a matted, tangled mess that still had some dried blood in it.

"Nurse Roxie said she'll bring in some detangler from home on her next shift, but I think it's beyond help at this point."

Sophie secretly agreed. "Well, when we get you out of here, we can get that mess cut off. We'll take you out and get you a fancy haircut, sound good?"

"That's a good idea." Parker was never particularly attached to her hair, Sophie knew, and she often complained about it getting in the way when she was thieving.

Sophie tried to think of something else to talk about, to keep the conversation light and off of the topic of Hardison, but Parker seemed to have only one thing on her mind.

"How's Hardison doing? Is he out yet?"

Of course. Sophie needed to fall back on her grifter skills. She resisted her instinct to take a deep breath and get the lie out in a rush, instead she kept her breathing normal, and forced herself to speak at a natural pace.

"No he's not out yet. Apparently his hearing got postponed."

Parker frowned. "Postponed, why?"

"Uh, the courtroom was overbooked, they need it for a jury trial."

Parker's frown deepened. "When did it get postponed to?"

Until we get him back in one piece.

"Wednesday," Sophie said, lying to herself as much as Parker. There was no way that it all wouldn't be over, for better or worse, by Wednesday.

"Wednesday?!" Parker said. "But that's forever from now. I want to talk to Hardison today. Do you think Nate could go and see him again and slip him an earbud? Even just for a couple of minutes, like last time?"

"Parker, I don't think that's a good idea. Every time Nate goes into that precinct as the lawyer, we are risking the cops digging deep into his alias, and it's not that well established." Sophie stopped, Parker was looking at her funny.

"What?"

"You're lying to me."

"What, no I'm not."

"You're using your grifter voice. The same one you used on us when you tricked us into going after the second David."

"I think 'tricked' is a strong choice of words, I–"

"Why are you lying to me about Hardison? Where is he?"

Sophie paused, biting her lip. Either she really was rusty, or Parker has gotten a lot better at reading people.

"Sophie, you tell me right now!" Parker almost shouted, her voice echoing off the walls. She had rolled onto her back and now was partially sitting up, only allowing the slightest wince to cross her face. With her ratted hair sticking up around her face, she looked quite wild. Sophie was afraid the cop outside would hear and come see what the commotion was.

"Okay, calm down, Parker." Sophie said. "You have to remain calm. We are on top of the situation."

"What situation?!"

"Hardison's missing," she said. "He never made it to the courthouse for his hearing, we think Liddick used some dirty cops he had on payroll to take him."

Parker slumped back against the pillow, her face drained of color.

"Take him?" she said, her voice trailing off to nothing.

Sophie squeezed her hand.

"We'll get him back, Parker. I promise."

"What can I do to help?"

"We need you to try to rest and get better," Sophie said. "And if you try to get up, I will strap you back down and leave you here."

Parker wrenched her hand out of Sophie's and made a noise halfway between a groan and a growl.

"I feel so useless in this goddamn bed!" Tears started pouring down Parker's face, and she wiped them away angrily.

Sophie's heart broke for her. She didn't say what she was thinking, which was that she felt useless too and she wasn't stuck in a bed.

When Nate had been abducted during cons in the past it had been nerve-wracking, but they had never been out of contact with him, they had known where he was the whole time, and they had known what the mark was capable of. There were too many things up in the air for Sophie to shake this feeling of dread in her gut. Plus, they knew what the mark was capable of this time, ruthlessness. Parker was evidence of that.

Sophie knew she had to get out of there, she can't count on Parker's nurses not to check on her much longer. But she couldn't leave her like this.

"Parker, listen to me," Sophie said. "We've got the full force of Nate's brain working for us here. He's not going to stop until he figures out where Hardison is. And once he does, Eliot's not going to stop until he gets Hardison back. Do you understand?"

The wildness inside Parker seemed to settle a little, she nodded.

"Can I have the earbud?" Parker asked. Sophie hesitated. "Please, Sophie, I can't just sit here imagining all the horrible things that could be happening to him, I'll go insane!"

"The battery won't last more than a day," Sophie said, then kicked herself. "Which I'm sure will be more than enough time to find Hardison."

Parker's face tightened in fear, and Sophie knew the cover-up she tried didn't work. Sophie not on her game today, her emotions were running too high.

Sophie sighed and pulled out the extra earbud, "Okay. I can't guarantee the boys will be wearing these all the time, but I'll keep mine in as much as possible. You have to stay completely silent when they have them in. You're not supposed to know he's gone. They'll turn your comm channel off if they know you're listening."

Parker nodded, and Sophie handed the earbud to her.

"I have to go," Sophie said. "Hardison's strong, just remember that. He'll make it through this."

Parker gave another nod, but didn't return the smile Sophie gave her. As Sophie slipped out the door past the guard her smile faded off her face. She couldn't con herself any better than she could con Parker.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: some violence in this chapter.

Hardison thought he was definitely in a warehouse of some kind. He couldn't see his surroundings, because they put a black hood over his head when they stopped to switch cars and he had been wearing it ever since. It was itchy and it smelled, and it reminded him a little of when he had woken up in the pitch black coffin, he had to keep reminding himself that he was in a large open space.

Their footsteps had echoed loudly when the car had finally stopped and they had led him to his current location. The door that they had opened sounded heavy and industrial too. Most likely a warehouse, probably down by the river or the railroad tracks too, these thugs were original like that.

As if on cue, Hardison heard a train whistle in the distance. He gave a little snort, figures. He was currently sitting in an hard chair, with his feet and hands taped to the arms and legs of the chair.

The thugs had left him to his thoughts in the chair for almost two hours. Occasionally he heard voices or footsteps around, so he knew he wasn't alone.

The most pressing thought on his mind other than the panic he was constantly trying to keep a lid on, was how bad his nose itched. It was driving him insane. He shook his head back and forth, hoping that the hood would shift against the itchy spot on his nose and provide some relief, but it didn't work. He sighed.

He knew he was avoiding thinking about what deep shit he was in. When he stopped thinking about his nose itch, the panic set in. His mind started racing around all the possible things the thugs could do to him.

He took a deep breath and tried to focus on the positives. The others knew he was missing by now. That was a positive, right?

_ But they'll have no idea where I am _ _,_ he thought, and his shoulders slumped.

Wait, those cops. He hadn't heard the voices of the two cops who had brought him from the precinct, and he remembered one of them saying they had to go back on duty. If they went back to their regular jobs, the team could find them. And Hardison was sure Eliot would make them talk, eventually.

But he would have to stay alive until eventually happened. He heard a noise behind him and turn his head to catch it. Voices, a group of them, getting closer.

_ Shit _ , he thought. That whole staying alive thing was probably about to get a little trickier. The voices got close, and then the hood was yanked off him. Hardison blinked from the daylight streaming in the filthy windows. It looked like he was actually in an abandoned factory of some sort. He didn't take a lot of time to look around his surrounding because his eyes were automatically drawn to the four men standing in front of him.

Three of them looked like they came directly out of the Henchman Catalog. Tall, thick-necked, and strapped, their faces remained expressionless as they stared down at him. The fourth man was the one that had pulled the hood off his head, he was so different from them it was almost comic. Short and slender, he was impeccably well-dressed. Hardison didn't know much about fashion, but the grey suit he was wearing looked similar to really expensive ones Sophie used to make him wear when he was part of the con. He wore a red dress shirt and a white tie underneath. He looked completely out of place.

Now he looked at Hardison with a cold smile plastered on his face.

"How are you doing today, Kurt?" he asked. "Is it okay if I call you Kurt?"

Hardison just stared at him.

"You can call me Louis."

He dropped the hood and opened a large black duffel back that was sitting on a table next to him. Hardison gulped. He had seen enough television shows to know the bag wasn't going to be full of kittens.

"My employer would like me to ask you a few questions," Louis said, his voice remaining perfectly polite.

"Employer?" Hardison.

"The employer who's building you broke into Thursday night," Louis said.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Hardison said. His first instinct had been to play dumb, but right after he said it, he kicked himself. He had been arrested and charged for breaking into the building, which of course they knew.

_ Idiot, _ he thought to himself. He shouldn't have started this out with such a blatant lie, now they'll think everything he says is a lie.

Louis pulled out a small set of pliers from the bag.

"I think you do know what I'm talking about," he said slowly. "And I don't appreciate liars."

Hardison's heart began pounding in his chest as Louis walked over to him, holding the pliers in front of him.  _ Here we go. _

"You're going to tell me everything," Louis said. "It's human nature. Self-preservation."

He gave Hardison's face a light tap with the pliers.

"So I'm going to give you a chance to preserve yourself," Louis said. "To start with, I want you tell me who you and your team are, and where we can find them."

_ Fat chance of that , _ Hardison said, but opted to say nothing.

"We already know where the blond girl is," Louis said.

Hardison stopped breathing.

"We'll be sending someone to finish her off soon. It should be easy, after all, drug interactions happen all the time in hospitals. But we know it wasn't just you two."

That was the wrong thing to say. As soon as he heard the threat Hardison's stomach dropped just for a second before a steely determination overtook him. They were not going to get another chance to hurt Parker, he would make sure of that.

His role was no longer to stay alive long enough for Eliot to find him. His role was now to stay alive long enough to find a way to get word to the team that Parker was still in danger. Then he had to convince Eliot to leave him here and go save her. Hardison would get himself out of here.

Hardison gulped. That thought process led him to entertain the idea that he wasn't going to get out of this alive. Eliot could get him out, but Eliot couldn't be in two places at once. Hardison had learned a lot from Eliot over the past six years, but let's face it, he was no hitter. He had counted another four guards walking around in the short time since the hood had come off,.

His heart couldn't decide if it wanted to jump up into his throat, or flutter piteously in his chest, so it seemed to alternate between the two.

But it was okay. As long as Parker was alive, he would be okay with whatever happened to him. Nate and Sophie were back, and the team would be together, more or less. Parker would take it the hardest, but she would have the others there to help her through. And Eliot, man, Eliot would be so angry. But Hardison wouldn't have to be there to face the wrath.

A sharp smack across his face startled him out of his thoughts. His head snapped to the left and he gritted his teeth against the pain spreading across his cheek.

"Am I boring you?" Louis said. Hardison turned his head to meet his eyes again, but he refused to say anything.

First things first, he needed to get out of these restraints so he pickpocket someone's phone and warn the team.

"So you don't want to talk about your friends?" Louis said, holding what looked to be a meat tenderizer now. "That's fine, let's talk about the files you took from my employer. Tell me what was on them and what your people plan to do with them."

Hardison honestly didn't know. He hadn't had a chance to look at them after he downloaded them, and he doubted Nate, Sophie or Eliot could break the encryption on them. Who the hell was this Liddick guy and what could he have on those files that was worth all of this?

"You're not very talkative, are you, Kurt?" Louis said, "That's okay, I have a way to change that."

He tapped the grooved meat tenderizer against his hand a few times.

"You see, sometimes anticipation is better than pain to get people to talk," he said, grinning a cruel smile. "Sometimes it's not."

Before Hardison could even flinch Louis brought the heavy hammer down on Hardison's right hand with a sickening crunch, lifted it high, and brought it down again.


	15. Chapter 15

Hardison tried his best to ignore the shooting pain coming from his right hand. He laid it gingerly in his lap, trying to find the least painful way to position it, but there didn't seem to be one. He flipped it over palm down and got an eyeful of the hamburger that was now the back of his hand. His stomach churned and he snapped his mouth shut, hoping he wouldn't throw up in this tiny room they had shoved him in.

Louis had been interrupted by a phone call right after the meat tenderizer had made an appearance. Apparently some sort of client had shown up to conduct business. Hardison had heard the word “kilos” so he assumed they weren’t dealing in timeshares.

Hardison had been roughly untaped and led off by the men he affectionately coined Goon #2 and Goon #3. Goon #1 was the brother who seemed to be attached at the hip with Louis. As they led him off Hardison was still a little woozy from the pain, but he used that to his advantage when he stumbled into Goon #3 and managed to lift his phone from his pocket, Parker-style.

That was five minutes ago, and now he was trying awkwardly to type Eliot’s number into the large phone with his left hand.

A small moan escaped him as he unconsciously moved his right hand to take the phone. For a moment he was embarrassed before he remembered there was no one to hear him whimper. He would have liked to have been able to say he had taken the beating earlier without a sound. Eliot would have. But truth be told when that hammer came down he had screamed like a teenage girl at a Taylor Swift concert. He could have sworn he blacked out for a second, too.

He managed to get the number dialed into the phone but paused for a moment, trying to think of what he was going to say. He had to convince Eliot and the rest of them to abandon him and save Parker. That was going to be a hard sell. After a moment he pushed send and brought the phone up to his ear. Always best to wing it.

Eliot picked up on the third ring, “Who is this?”

“It’s me.”

"Hardison! Where are you?" Eliot said.

"I was in an old factory by the railroad tracks but I escaped."

"Are you hurt?"

"No," he said, hoping he was convincing.

"Good, we're coming to get you. How do I turn on your GPS tracker thingy?"

"No, listen. You have to get to the hospital and get Parker out of there. She's not safe. One of Liddick's men, he said they're sending someone to the hospital to finish her off. They're going to fake a bad drug reaction or something."

"Shit," Eliot said. "When?"

"Soon," he said. "It sounded like soon, like right-now-as-we-speak soon."

"All right," Eliot said, "Nate, we need to meet Sophie at the hospital, now."

Hardison heard the engine of the car start.

"Are you going to be okay on your own for a little while?" Eliot asked.

"Yeah, don't worry about me. I'll make my way to you. They took my wallet and phone though, so I don't have any money, it'll take a while for me to get to you guys, but you shouldn't wait. I'll hitch a ride or steal a car."

"Okay," Eliot said. "But be careful, don't get caught. You’re being branded an escaped prisoner, your face is on the news. Getting arrested by the wrong cop could land you right back in Liddick's hands."

"I will, but Eliot," Hardison said. "Just get her out of there."

"We will, man. Don't worry."

"Where will you take her? She still needs medical care."

"Uh, right . . . let me think," Eliot was silent for a moment. "Minneapolis!"

"Minneapolis?"

"It's not too far and there's an ex-army medic there who owes me a favor. A big one."

"Okay," Hardison said, steeling himself to say what he needed to say next. "This phone is about to die, if you don't hear from me in time just go. Get out of the city while you can and I'll meet you in Minneapolis."

Eliot paused, "I don't know, man."

"Listen, I'm fine for the foreseeable future. Parker is not. She's the priority."

"But how will you find us?"

"If you keep that phone on you I can track it as soon as I get a reliable internet connection. I'll find you guys, I promise."

_ Or more likely, they'll find my body floating in the Chicago River, half-eaten by fish,  _ he thought grimly.

"Okay," Eliot sound dubious, like he was about to change his mind.  Hardison decided not to give him the chance.  


"Alright the battery is literally dying right now so I'll see you in-"  


He ended the call. He took a deep breath and tried to imagine Eliot’s reaction if he knew what Hardison was doing. He would be mad as hell for sure, but Hardison hoped part of him would be a little bit proud. This is definitely something Eliot would do. Only Eliot would probably sacrifice himself with a steely resolve and a gunslinging attitude. All Hardison could manage was to barely keep from whimpering at the pain every time he moved his hand, and a recurring feeling that he was going to be sick.

There was one tiny semblance of a plan that was forming in the back of his brain, but it was a long shot at best, and it would require leaving a lot of things up to luck. 

Clumsily, because he was using his left hand, he wiped the call to Eliot from the phone’s call log and put it in his jacket pocket. For the plan to work, he needed to slip it back into Goon #3’s pocket before he noticed it missing.

The timing was good so far at least, he could hear footsteps coming near. A second later the door to the small room was thrown open and the henchmen were back. Goon #3 ended up on his left side as he was led back out, perfect position for Hardison to do a reverse lift and put the phone back in his pocket.

_ Parker would be so proud, _ he thought, and an image of her smiling face entered his mind.  _ All of this is worth it if she gets to keep smiling that smile. _

Louis was hanging up the phone when Hardison was led back out to where his chair was waiting for him. He turned around and gave Hardison a sickly-sweet smile. He could see some of his own blood staining Louis’s white tie.

“Shall we continue?” he said, gesturing to the chair.

Hardison didn’t sit.

“Look man,” he said. “If all you want is those files I took from the server, I can take you to ‘em. No need for anymore of this.”

He raised his injured hand up to eye level.

“The servers?” Louis said, then snorted. “You think all of this is about some financial info you pulled off the servers? Perhaps you are useless after all.”

He pulled a handgun from goon #2’s holster and pointed it at Hardison. Hardison gulped, well, the plan was going swimmingly.

“I will only ask this once. Do you, or do you not have the thumb drive taken from Mr. Liddick’s office the night of your break-in?”

Thumb drive? All of this was about the dumb thumb drive? It had been sitting on the desk next to Liddick’s computer. Hardison had taken it on a last-minute whim, thinking that even if there was nothing useful on it, he could always use another spare thumb drive. He had put it in the computer bag along with his computer.

The computer bag that was in the van that Eliot had had to ditch.

But no, Eliot would have made sure to take the bag, his computer had all the files from the Ponzi scheme on it, which was the whole point of this damn cursed-ass job. 

Louis cocked the gun.

“Yes! Yes, okay? I have it.”

“You’ll have to try a little harder than that to convince me.”

“It’s blue!” Hardison shouted, wracking his brains to remember. “With a little lightning bolt on the side, 32 gigabytes. Or 64, or something like that. I have it, I promise. We just need to go to my safe house.”

Louis thought for a moment, then lowered the gun.

“Marcus,” Louis said, “You and Doug will take Kurt to his safe house and recover the drive and deliver it to me.”

Doug? Goon #3’s name was Doug? Hardison was instantly less terrified. Hard to be scared of anyone named Doug.

“You need not deliver Kurt here back to me, dispose of him as you see fit. Though if he cooperates, try not to make it so painful. Just good manners, you know?”

And the terror ratcheted back up again.

 


	16. Chapter 16

 

"And you spell your name E-V-A-N?," Sophie asked the morgue attendant while she pretended to puff on the cigarette she bummed from him.

"Yeah, uh, that's how my mom spelled it."

"Well isn't that just delicious?" she said tapping him on the arm. That was the fifth time she had mentioned food during the conversation, and she had punctuated each one with a tap on the arm, hopefully Evan here would quickly decide to take his lunch break early.

She looked at her watch and furrowed her brow.

"Damn, my break was over three minutes ago, I've got to get back."

Evan looked disappointed, just like she wanted.

"But you should come look for me on floor three next week, we could get lunch," she said, leaning in and putting her hand on his chest. As she pulled away, she took the badge that was clipped to his pocket. One more arm tap to seal the neuro-linguistic programming, and she turned and sauntered off around the corner. A second later Nate pulled up with a newly stolen van.

"Any problems?" she asked, handing him the morgue attendant's badge when he got out.

"No they left their keys in it. People are too trusting."

Just then she saw the sticker on the driver's side door.

"You stole a church van?"

"Yeah, well, lucky it's just a cheap sticker, it should come right off."

He tugged on it, and it did.

"Nate."

He looked up and saw her disapproving look.

"What? I'll have Hardison make a donation to replace it when we get to Minneapolis. I'm supposed to be the one with Catholic guilt here, not you."

She gave him a little smile. “This is kinda fun, huh?"

He looked at her like she was crazy.

"I mean, obviously I wish it were under better circumstances," she said. "But being back with the team, working a job, having a purpose, it's nice."

"It is," he said, and paused. "And that's what worries me."

She cupped his face in her hands and gave him a quick kiss.

"I understand why you wanted to leave, darling," she said, "But wandering aimlessly around the globe with me doesn't seem to be the answer. You still seemed lost."

"And you?"

"I wasn't lost, I was bored to tears."

He gave a soft chuckle, "Yeah, I guess we have some things to think about, that is, if we manage to get everyone out of the city in one piece."

She took a quick peek around the corner to make sure Evan had gone back inside.

"Evan the mouth-breather should be going on his lunch break in a couple of minutes. It sounds like there will be one other person left in the morgue at the moment. Think you can create a distraction to steal the gurney and the body bag?"

"Oh, I think I'll manage."

Eliot's voice came over the earbud, "I got a pair of scrubs but the badge I nabbed is from a black guy, it won't hold up to close inspection."

They both reached up to their ears at the same time to unmute their earbuds.

"All right, wait for me in the lobby," Sophie said.

"Eliot, you clear on your part of the plan?" Nate asked.

Eliot voice came over the earbud gruff and annoyed, "Not sure if I would actually call this a plan, but yeah, I got it."

Nate muted his earbud and looked at her, she followed his lead and muted hers as well.

"He's been a regular barrel of laughs this weekend."

Sophie reached over to straighten the collar of the scrubs Nate was wearing. It was her spare pair that she had bought to sneak in to the hospital shortly after she arrived. They were a little tight, and it’s obvious he felt self conscious in the form hugging pants.

"Oh? As opposed to the comedic genius he usually is?" she said. "Go easy on him, this whole thing has got to be basically his worst nightmare come to life."

Nate didn't answer but gave her a look that she's come to recognize as him realizing she made a good point but not wanting to let her know it.

She raised her eyebrow and left him to make her way to the front entrance of the hospital. She walked through the sliding glass doors and a second later Eliot was next to her in a pair of light green scrubs, his hair tied back in a ponytail.

She looked at the badge he was using and frowned, it would be obvious from a mile away.

“Here,” she said and flipped it around so the picture faced down, “You accidentally put your badge on backwards today. Just let me do the talking, and hopefully no one will even ask to look at it.”

He grunted in response.

“You guys should hurry,” Parker’s voice came over the comm, “My doctor just left and my nurse is on break. We have a little window of time to work with.”

Sophie and Eliot boarded the elevator and Sophie pressed floor five, “Be there in a jiffy.”

Eliot glared over at her.

“What?”

“I can’t believe you told her about Hardison.”

Sophie sputtered, “What? What difference does it make? We would have had to tell her now anyways.”

“I guess, but we could have at least been able to tell her that he had gotten away at the same time. No need to worry her.”

Sophie shifted uncomfortably, “Yeah well, I’m sorry. She seems to have gotten a lot better at reading people. Or I’ve just gotten rusty.”

Eliot nodded.

“We all had to step up when . . . when the two of you left. Parker more than either of us. She took her new role very seriously. Well, as serious as Parker takes anything.”

Sophie shifted uncomfortably, unsure of what to say. Eliot seemed to be trying to make his voice as neutral and unassuming as possible. The more he tried to keep from sounding like he was accusing her, the guiltier she felt. He was specifically not saying that it was her and Nate’s fault that they had all ended up here, even though the argument could easily be made.

Before she could sort out her feelings, the elevator dinged and the doors opened onto the fifth floor. Sophie glanced quickly to the nurses station on the left, there was only one person there. She turned right and Hardison followed. The handful of patients and family members out and about in the hallway didn’t spare them a second glance. All it took was a set of scrubs to render you basically invisible in a hospital.

The cop that was standing outside of Parker’s door was the same one that had been there this morning and he still looked bored. He seemed to recognize her, because he barely glanced at her badge before he nodded to let them in.

Parker sat up taller when they came in.

“El-” she started, but he held a finger up to his lips. Sophie saw him pause to look at her, a pained smile on his face.

“Eliot,” Sophie said quietly, “Go on, do it.”

“Right,” he said and took his position in the corner by the door.

Sophie went to the door and opened it a crack, making her voice all breathless, “Officer, she escaped!”

“What?!” came the reply, and Sophie moved aside as the young officer rushed into the room. He froze when he saw Parker still in the bed.

As soon as the door clicked shut, Eliot stepped up behind him and elbowed him in the side of the face, the officer crumpled and Eliot caught him before he hit the floor.

“Handcuff him to the metal bar in the bathroom,” Sophie suggested, and Eliot dragged the limp man into the small bathroom.

A second later he came out, carrying the officer’s keys and radio.

“Well, first part’s done,” he said.

Parker beamed at him. She still looked pale to Sophie, and her hair was still a ratted mess, but with that smile on her face she looked more and more like her old self. To Sophie’s surprise Eliot walked over and without any hesitation grabbed her hand.

“How you feeling?”

“I’m okay, Eliot, really.”

“Parker,” he grumbled.

She sighed and laid back against her pillow, “I’m as weak as a newborn kitten, and about as useful. Tell me exactly what Hardison said.”

“I’m not going through this again, Parker,” Eliot said, dropping her hand, “You heard us telling Sophie about it over the comms.” He shot Sophie a look, “Even if you weren’t supposed to.”

Sophie stared back at him, unabashed.

“But he really said he got away? And he wasn’t hurt?” Parker asked.

“Yes,” Eliot said. “And we’ll wait for him to contact us when he gets a working phone.”

Parker nodded, looking relieved.

Sophie reached up and tapped her earbud, “We’re ready for you, Nate.”

“I’ll be there in two minutes. Eliot, I need you to distract anyone at the nurses station.”

Sophie peeked out the door and down the hall.

“Still just one nurse, red hair, in her forties,” she said.

“That’s Nurse Roxie,” Parker said. “She’s nice. Oooh, Eliot, she really likes country music, you can use that to flirt with her.”

“How can I use that?”

“You sing country.”

“That was one time,” he said, his face going red, “For a job, and then never again.”

Parker raised her eyebrow at him.

“I heard you every day in the shower,” she said, “The walls at the safe house are pretty thin.”

He turned to leave, grumbling under his breath, “Don’t gotta tell me how frickin’ thin those walls are.”

Sophie found herself smiling, she hadn’t really realized how much she had missed them until the bickering had kicked in.

A few moments later they heard him striking up a conversation with the nurse.

Sophie looked at Parker, “There hasn’t been anyone you don’t recognize trying to get into your room, or anything?”

Parker shook her head, “Why?”

“Hardison made it sound like Liddick’s guys were on their way to . . . you know.”

“Finish me off?” she said nonchalantly.

Sophie nodded, “He made it sound like it was happening right now, I’m just surprised we haven’t come across anyone.”

Parker frowned, “Maybe Hardison was wrong.”

Sophie saw something flit across her face, but before she could ask her about it, the door opened and Nate's ass pushed its way into the room, followed by the rest of him pulling a gurney with an empty body bag on it. Sophie couldn't help it, she reached over and gave one of his cheeks a little squeee.

He jumped and let out a high squeaking sound, before he face the hospital bed, trying to regain his composure.

"Parker," he said, "Good to see you."

Parker gave him a big smile, and Sophie sighed.

"That's it? That's all you have to say to her? You are so emotionally constipated it's ridiculous. She almost died and it's like you don't even care."

"What? She knows I care, that's why I'm here. Right?" he looked at Parker.

"I know he cares," Parker said, "Why else would he put on women's scrubs and be seen in public with them?"

"Exactly," he said, looking at Sophie. She rolled her eyes, honestly, sometimes she felt like the only adult on the entire team.

Suddenly Eliot's voice got very loud while he was talking to the nurse, "Oh don't worry, I've got all the time in the world. It's not like I have anything better to do right now."

"Uh, I think Eliot wants us to hurry up," Parker said.

"Right," Sophie said.

"Okay, so as soon as we unhook you from these monitors the nurse is going to notice," Nate said. "Eliot, I need you to lead her away from the nurses' station."

"Ready to get in the body bag?" Sophie said.

Parker nodded, "Sure, it'll be like old times."

Nate unzipped the body bag all the way down and struggled with it for a moment, try to get it propped it open as best as he could.

"Eliot, are you clear?"

Eliot's voice came whispering over the comms, "Yes, go now, you've got sixty seconds, tops."

Parker started pulling electrodes off her chest, causing the monitor in her room to start flashing and beeping. Sophie when over and unplugged it from the wall, hoping the noise hadn't garnered any attention from wherever Eliot had lured the nurse to. She then reached over and helped Parker unhook what looked like a blood pressure cuff.

Last was the IV. Sophie bit her lip, no way was she comfortable pulling IV's out of anyone's veins.

"Sophie, we gotta go," Nate said.

She found where the IV tube connected to bags of what Sophie guessed was morphine and antibiotics, she pulled on it and the tubes disconnected with a POP!, fluid leaking onto the bed and the floor.

"We'll just leave that in your arm for now, okay?"

Parker shrugged, "Sure."

"Is there anything else?"

"No," Parker said. "I had the doctor tell the nurses to take out the catheter this morning after I heard you were coming." She wrinkled her nose. "It was not fun. I don't recommend it. Doctor Kapur seemed dead set against it, but I basically threw a fit, so, he didn't have a choice."

Sophie paused. _She really shouldn't be leaving the hospital ._ But unfortunately, Parker's immediate safety trumped any possible setbacks to her recovery. Sophie just had to hope that any damage they did today was minimal.

"Okay, let's go," Nate said and he positioned himself at the foot of the bed. "We'll have to lift you, and it'll probably hurt."

Parker moved to pull back the covers and then stopped.

"Uh, I think Sophie should take my feet," Parker murmured. ". . . cuz . . . I'm not wearing any underwear . . . and . . . you might get a flash of . . ."

Sophie almost laughed as Nate blanched and moved to the head of the bed as fast as he could, "Right, yeah, good plan."

She positioned herself at Parker's feet and on Nate's mark and with a great heave they hoisted her up and onto the gurney.

Sophie saw that Parker’s eyes had squeezed shut and she was breathing heavily, but she hadn't made a sound. Sophie put a hand on her shoulder as Nate moved the edges of the body bag up around her.

"You alright?" she asked. She looked down at Parker's stomach for any blood. None. She didn't think they had pulled any stitches out.

Parker took a couple more breaths and managed to get out a strained, "Yes."

Sophie looked at Nate, he had opened the door an inch or two and was looking out. "It's clear, we gotta go."

He started to zip up the zipper, pausing when he got to her chin. Sophie saw that her breathing had returned to normal. Nate reached in and gave her an affection tap on the cheek.

"You good?" he asked.

She nodded and he zipped the bag close.

"Let us know if you run out of air," Sophie said.

Nate checked the hallway one more time before they began wheeling the gurney. Eliot had done a good job, there were no nurses or staff members on the floor at the moment. A woman walking in the hallway stopped and stared at the body bag with wide eyes. Sophie gave her a quick glance and decided from the woman's body language that she was more uncomfortable than suspicious, so she disregarded her.

While waiting for the elevator Sophie had to stop herself from shifting nervously from foot to foot. Nate was standing staring straight ahead at the elevator doors, but Sophie could see him glancing out of the corner of his eye, checking their periphery. There were more people coming down the hallway, including a few nurses Sophie could see. They needed to get out of here before a nurse saw them with a body bag and started wondering which of the patients on this floor was in it.

The elevator dinged its arrival and Sophie and Nate maneuvered the gurney inside.

"Still doing okay?" Sophie directed to the body bag.

From inside she heard a muffled, "It's stuffy."

Sophie unzipped it a half inch for fresh air, exposing some tangled blond hair.

"Eliot, we're clear," Nate said as the elevator doors shut.

"I am too, I'll take the stairs," Eliot said.

On the fourth floor the elevator stopped and two nurses got on, chatting loudly about their kids. They barely even looked at them, and didn't seem to notice the tense silence that stretched between Sophie and Nate.

The chatting nurses got off on the first floor, and no one got on to go with them to the basement. Sophie let out the breath she was holding. Maybe this would all work out after all.

The elevator doors opened on Eliot waiting for them on the bottom floor. He gestured for them to be quiet and grabbed Sophie’s end of the gurney. They passed a few opened doors with people in them, but no one noticed them go by.

Sophie opened the back door and tucked her head out, and seeing that the coast was clear she gestured them out. They made their way across the loading dock. Sophie unzipped the bag all the way down for Parker, but put a hand on her shoulder so she would stay lying down.

As they rounded the corner to where the church van was parked, Sophie saw that an ambulance had parked approximately twenty feet away. Nate opened the side door for them, but Eliot had frozen in place. Sophie looked over to see him staring at the men getting out of the ambulance with narrowed eyes.

“This isn’t the right entrance for ambulances,” he mumbled to himself. Sophie followed his gaze. The men were dressed in scrubs, she noticed with an uneasy feeling, not the standard uniform for EMTs. They also wore bulky leather jackets over their scrubs despite it being an unseasonable warm day for April. The man who got out of the passenger side glanced over at them. Sophie could see a close cropped haircut, and a set of cold eyes.

Parker had propped herself up on her elbows on the gurney, and was staring in the direction of the ambulance like the rest of them. Sophie heard her gasp suddenly.

“He’s the one who shot me,” she said.

The man with the cold eyes called out to his companion and gestured in their direction. They had spotted Parker. Suddenly the men’s hands were reaching into their bulky jackets.

“Everyone in the back!” Eliot shouted. He scooped Parker up quickly and deposited her on the first row of seats.

The men were screwing silencers onto the end of their pistols.

Sophie clamored in the row behind Parker, with Nate right behind her. Eliot shut the doors on them.

A few seconds later the first shots pinged against the side of the van. The driver’s side door opened and Eliot slid behind the wheel.

“Heads down!” he shouted.

Sophie pushed herself down towards the floor of the van as much as she could. She could feel Nate’s push himself partly on top of her, trying to shield her.

Suddenly the sound of squealing tires filled the air and the van began move very fast. Another round of shots hit the side and Sophie heard glass shatter somewhere over her head.

 


	17. Chapter 17

Hardison led the way up the street, the two thugs Doug and Marcus following closely behind him. Hardison had convinced them in the car to remove his restraints, pointing out that it would be extremely conspicuous in this neighborhood. They seemed to feel the need to overcompensate for this by keeping their hands on their gun holsters and walking as close to him as they possibly could, his heel had been stepped on three times in the time it took to walk the half-block to the brownstone.

Arriving at the front entrance to the building, Hardison on instinct reached into his pocket for his keys, and then paused. Marcus grunted and gave him an impatient nudge. Hardison turned to face them, "Uh, you guys took all my stuff, including my keys."

Hardison turned back around and listened to them grumble to each other. He knew that the hidden cameras he had installed were capturing their faces, and his computer system was running their images through facial recognition. Hardison was pretty sure that Nate and Eliot would take Sophie with them to go get Parker. The safe house should be empty. And while he didn't want to lead a bunch of gun-wielding thugs to his friends, there was a small part of him that wished that he would walk in and Eliot would be there, alerted to their presence by the facial recognition, ready to unleash hell on Doug and Marcus and save his ass.

The grumbling behind grew to a crescendo, apparently it had been Doug's job to grab the keys before they left, and he sworn that he had, but they were no longer in his pocket. As Doug shuffled away to go check the car, Marcus leaned in close to him, and Hardison felt something hard press against his back.

"Try anything and I'll shoot you full of holes," Marcus said, his voice full of glee, as if he half-wished that Hardison would try to get away, so he could shoot him full of holes.

Hardison stayed as still as could and just prayed for this whole thing to be over. He hand hurt, and he was tired, and he was tired of being scared. A few moments later Doug appeared, keys in hand. "They must've fell out my pocket."

Hardison took the keys from him and awkwardly unlocked the door with his left hand. Then the three of them were moving up the six flights of stairs to the top floor. Hardison couldn't help but enjoy the sound of Doug and Marcus huffing and puffing as they reached the top. Not a lot of cardio involved in kidnapping and shooting people he supposed. Maybe that's why Eliot doesn't like guns, it made you soft.

The door to their loft safe house was protected with an electric lock with a 10-digit code and manual lock. New school for his peace of mind and old school for Parker's. It took only a moent to key in the code, and a second later Hardison turned the key in the lock and they were in. Once inside he punched in the code on the alarm keypad by the door to keep it from sounding.

Hardison quickly scanned the main room, it was empty, and the lights were off in the two bedrooms and the bathroom. He gave a little sigh, there would be no rescue for him. And then he spotted an abandoned cup of tea on the table, and he immediately felt guilty. It looked like Sophie was the last one here, he would have just been handing Louis one more victim to interrogate. But it didn't matter now, now he had to save his own skin.

Hardison saw his computer bag across the room on the kitchen counter, he knew the thumb drive would most likely still be in it, Eliot and the others wouldn't have even known to look for it. He bought himself some tome and feigned searching around the loft while looking for the other items that he needed.

Marcus kept an eye on him while Doug swept quickly through the apartment. After he determined that no one else was in the apartment he moved back over to the entrance to stand with Marcus, who gave him a gruff, "Hurry up."

Yeah, sorry," Hardison said, moving over to the desk, "I don't know where they would have put it."

Doug gave him an impatient grunt.

Hardison moved over to the desk next to the living room and pulled opened the top drawer, and saw the sleek back rectangle that was Parker's spare taser. He started praising all the religious deities he could think of that it was still there. He stuck it in the front waistband his pants, and pulled his shirt down over it to cover it.

He didn't know if one of the goons saw him reach into the drawer, of if they just lost patience, but suddenly Hardison heard one of them cocking their gun.

"You've got one minute," Doug said.

Hardison gulped. He moved directly over to the kitchen counter and unzipped the front pocket on the bag, wincing when he forgot to use his left hand. There it was. Small and blue with a lightning bolt on the side. He held it up so they could see, "Got it." Now he just had to get close to them and taser them both before either of them has a chance to shoot him, and he had to do it left handed. _Perfect, what could go wrong?_

He started to take a step towards them when he stopped, remembering something. A specific something that Eliot had acquired and stored over in the drawer by his computer. A specific something that Eliot had said that under no circumstances were they to play with because it was for emergencies only. Hardison almost smirked. Even Eliot would say that this qualified as an emergency.

As he turned in his path towards the computer he saw Doug and Marcus tense up, Doug raising the gun to point it at Hardison, and they both shuffled closer, stopping ten feet in front of him. He froze in front of the tall counter-like table that held his computer, and raised his hands, looking at them.

"I was just going to check to make sure my team didn't copy the files off this thing," he said cautiously, showing him the flash drive in his left hand. "Unless you want to explain to your bosses how the files that you worked so hard to re-acquire got leaked because you two weren't thorough."

"Fine," Marcus said, "Make it fast."

Hardison turned to his computer and pulled up his custom operating system. He pulled up the command prompt and typed in the command that would wipe the entire system clean, he held off on hitting enter. He then moved and opened the drawer with his right hand, doing his best to ignore the pain shooting up his arm. He gingerly wrapped his broken fingers around the flash-bang grenade, continuing to pretend to type nonsense on his computer with his good hand.

He could feel his whole body tense up, this was it. He was either going to make it out of this alive or he wasn't, but it was all going to be over in the next couple of minutes. His mind was trying to remain nonchalant about the whole thing, but his dry mouth and pounding heart betrayed him. Taking a deep breath he hit enter on the keyboard and his computer went to work deleting it's own data. He pulled the pin out of the grenade, turned towards the two hulking men and chucked the it their way.

Without skipping a beat he ducked behind the back of the table, covering his ears with his hands and squeezing his eyes shut. Two seconds later he heard a muffled BANG! but he didn't allow himself to wait one second. He dashed from behind the table, grabbed the taser, and hoped against hope that the two thugs were too disoriented to shoot him.


	18. Chapter 18

The tires screeched loudly as Eliot maneuvered them out of the loading dock and onto the road. He gritted his teeth and sneaked through the red light at the first intersection, ignoring the honks from the angry drivers that had to slam on their breaks. The gunshots stopped for the moment, they were out of sight of ambulance, for now. The traffic on the next block was heavier as Eliot queued into the right turn lane behind three other cars. "Is anyone shot?" he called out, meeting Nate's eyes for a moment in the rearview mirror.

"No," Sophie said, and Nate shook his head.

A second later a soft voice came from the seat directly behind him, "No more than I was before."

"Funny, Parker," he said. "Come on . . . come on . . ." he tapped his fingers against the wheel. "You can turn right on red for Christ's sake!"

But none of the cars in front of him were moving. Glancing in the rearview mirror he saw what he had feared he would see, an ambulance turning onto the road from the a few blocks back. _Shit._ If they risked using the sirens they would be on them in no time, traffic or no traffic. It would be a pretty ballsy move in what was obviously a stolen ambulance, but Liddick's guys so far have been nothing if not ballsy. One of the cars in front of him turned and he was able to move up a couple of feet. He heard a couple of blips from the ambulance behind him. They weren't turning the sirens on full, but they were using it to sneak through the intersection on the last block.

The light in front of them turned green and Eliot followed the rest of the cars around the corner. He immediately moved into the left lane to get around the slow traffic and sped up.

"I know your instinct is to go fast but we cannot get pulled over," Nate said. He started making his way forward from the back and settled in passenger seat.

"Liddick's men are right behind us, Nate," Eliot said as Nate buckled himself in. They were having some luck with green lights at the moment, and Eliot was able to put a a half dozen cars between the their van and the ambulance.

"I know that. But let's forget for a second that we don't know how many dirty cops Liddick has on his payroll, this is a stolen van. We just broke a fugitive in a fairly high-profile break-in out of police custody at the hospital, and they've been flashing your face on the local news for the past three days. I repeat: WE CANNOT GET PULLED OVER."

Eliot grumbled in reluctant agreement and took his foot off the gas a little. A couple of blocks later he was pulling onto the first highway entrance ramp he could find allowing him to open up his speed a little. Unfortunately it also allowed the ambulance room to open up its speed. The traffic was sparse enough on the highway right now that Liddick's men didn't even need to use their sirens to catch up to them. Eliot glanced in the rearview mirror, he needed to shake them once and for all. He glanced at the road ahead of him, formulating a plan.

"Everyone, keep your heads down, I'm going to let the ambulance catch up to us."

To their credit, no one questioned him, it was a testament to how completely they trusted him with their lives. Eliot gritted his teeth as he took his foot off the gas and allowed the van to slow down. He didn't have the best track record in that department lately.

He had to slow down gradually enough that the henchman in the ambulance didn't realize he was letting them catch up, but he also had to do it quickly enough that they were right behind them by the time the highway split in three-fourths of a mile. He also didn't want to give them the chance to start shooting again. The ambulance drew closer to them, close enough that he could make out the outlines of the driver when he glanced behind him in the side mirror.

The highway split was coming up fast. Eliot was doing some rough calculations, weighing the variables in his head. He thought through how close the ambulance was, versus how fast they were going, versus how maneuverable he thought a beat up church van would be. Then he waited until the highway started to split into two forks, following the curve to the left, and at the last possible second he jerked the wheel to the right, changing to the right fork and missing the center divide by mere inches. The Chevy he had cut off honked angrily at them, but Eliot paid them no mind. He was watching the ambulance, which hadn't reacted quickly enough and was now stuck merging onto a completely different highway.

Nate had craned his neck around to check, and gave an celebratory whoop when he saw that they had lost their tail. Eliot couldn't help but smile as well, something finally went their way. He had even managed to get them on a highway heading north, which was the way to Minneapolis.

"You're two for two on car chases this week, Eliot," Sophie exclaimed over the sound of the wind rushing through the broken window.

"I'm one for two on dodging bullets this week," Parker said.

"STOP," Eliot grumbled. Although if she was feeling strong enough to joke about it, that was a hopeful sign in his eyes. Irritating, but hopeful. He slowed down even further until he was going roughly the speed as the traffic around him. He took one hand off the wheel, clenching and un-clenching it, trying to stretch some life back into it after tenseness of the last couple of minutes.

"Let's go get Hardison," Parker said.

Eliot shot a glance at Nate, who's brows clenched together. "We've got to get out of the city, before the police can put out an APB on you, and this van," Nate said slowly.

"We are out of the city."

"We have to get out of the area," Nate said, he was choosing his words carefully, like he was trying to tell a child bad news. "Illinois highways have tollbooths everywhere. They can send information to tollbooth operators and state troopers to be on the lookout for us."

"And they can track our movements with that thing," Eliot pointed to the electronic tollbooth pass that was stuck to the windshield. "It pays the tolls automatically as we pass through them, it is also registered to this van."

"And we didn't have time to disable the security cameras in the hospital, so they probably caught footage of us in the van," Sophie said.

"Meaning they can trace it," Nate said.

"Fine I get it!" Parker exclaimed, "How far do we have to go?"

Eliot paused, "We probably can't stop until we get out of the state." He couldn't see her lying down on the seat, but she fell silent, and he could picture her sulking. He couldn't really blame her. It felt wrong leaving him behind. It made his stomach twist a little tighter with every mile they traveled away from the city. They were incomplete. Hardison had said he was fine, that he had escaped and was making his way towards them, but something felt off.

His thoughts were interrupted when Sophie announced that she had packed a change of clothes for all of them, Nate had dutifully moved the bags from the car to the van before he had gone into the morgue. Sophie was passing around clothes for everyone. Eliot respectfully kept his eyes off the rearview mirror as Sophie helped Parker change. Parker apparently was very excited to wear pants again because "Being bare-assed is only fun for so long, after that it's just cold."

Eliot rolled his eyes. It was a little harder not to be distracted by Nate stripping down to his boxers next to him. Eliot shifted in his seat a little, glad that Sophie thought to bring a change of clothes, even if he couldn’t change into them while driving. Sitting in borrowed clothes while your sweat mingled with someone else’s is not fun, he took a whiff of himself, meh, he had smelled worse. When he shifted in his seat a second time he sat on something hard, which reminded him of what he had in his back pocket.

“Oh hey, Parker here,” he said, tossing the little bottle of pills in her direction, “I stole some Vicodin from the closet I stuffed the doctor in.”

“I don’t know. I feel fine.”

“Yeah, well the morphine in your system is going to start wearing off in the next hour or two, and then you’re going to start feeling severely less than fine,” Eliot said.

“Come on, love,” Sophie said, “Just two for now?”

Eliot assumed that Parker gave in at that point, because she stopped arguing, and Sophie started digging around in her bag to pulled out a bottle of water that she packed.

“You didn’t happen to pack anything stronger than water in there, did you?” Nate asked, now fully dressed.

Eliot glanced in the rearview mirror just in time to see Sophie shoot Nate a look that would turn Medusa herself to stone.

++++++++++++++

A little over an hour and six tollbooths later and they crossed over the Wisconsin state line. The passenger’s in the van had fallen silent, Parker had fallen asleep, Sophie was huddled in back trying to avoid the wind streaming in the broken window, looking in the mirror he saw that she had wrapped herself in his jacket that she had packed for him, and had a grumpy expression on her face. Nate was staring out the window silently, but from the look on his face, he was processing something.

“Welcome to Wisconsin,” Eliot muttered to no one in particular.

“Can we switch cars and go get Hardison now?” a small voice from the backseat said, apparently she wasn’t asleep after all.

Nate sighed, “Parker, we’ve been over this. Hardison said he would meet us in Minneapolis. We need to keep—”

“I have to pee.”

“Parker,” Sophie said.

“Eliot, pull over, I have to pee!”

Eliot sighed and took the exit for the rest area ahead. He had a sneaking suspicion that this was a stalling tactic and not a very subtle one judging by the looks on Sophie and Nate’s faces, but pulled off the highway anyway. The rest area was almost completely empty. One rusty van sat in the back corner of the parking lot, all the doors were open, and three twenty-something-year-old guys sat with their limbs hanging out of it, smoking something that Eliot seriously doubted was tobacco. The back lot was for trucks, and it was only occupied by two semi-trucks, the drivers most likely sleeping or getting some coffee from the vending machines.

Eliot opened the door and climbed out of the van. Making his way around the vehicle he did another scan of the parking lot out of habit, and not seeing a threat in the three stoners on the other side he decided that the coast was clear. He opened the van door on a sulking Parker, the wind from the broken window causing her knotted hair to stick up all around her head. He almost cracked a smile.

“Do you really have to go?” he asked.

“Yes,” she crossed her arms and glared at him, as if daring him to contradict her.

“Fine. Sophie, you come with us.”

“One second,” Sophie said, and she was rooting around in one of the bags. “Aha, here.” She pushed a black knitted cap over Parker’s head, a very familiar black knitted cap.

“Hey, that’s mine!” he said.

“Yeah, well, your hair isn’t covered in dried blood, so, Parker gets it.”

He sighed and climbed into the van next to Parker. “Arms around my neck,” he told her and she obliged. He put one arm around her shoulders and the other under her legs and scooped her up as gently as he could. She didn’t make a noise, but he felt her tense up, and he could tell she was holding her breath. His annoyance with her instantly melted away. “Sorry, darlin’,” he said as he made his way out of the van.

Nate got out as well. “I’ll be right back,” he said and began to saunter off.

“Don’t go far,” Sophie called out to him, and he gave a wave as acknowledgment. The three of them made their way through the front door of the brown brick building. Eliot glanced around the plain but brightly lit halls, no one was about. He followed the signs for the bathroom. He opened the door for the for the private family bathroom and set Parker down on the toilet, fully clothed. She blinked up at him, and he cleared his throat and turned to Sophie, “Think you can handle this part?” She nodded and he made to leave.

“Wait, here,” Sophie said, and she handed him one of the bags she had packed, “Change of clothes for you.”

He grumbled his thanks and went out. He entered the empty men’s room. He didn’t even bother going in the stalls, changing right there by the row of sinks. Sophie had managed to pack his most comfortable T-shirt and his favorite flannel he noticed gratefully as he pulled them over his head. However, the jeans were the ones that Hardison had shrunk in the wash, and he had to struggle to get them zipped. He remembered how angry he had been at the time, now, thinking back on it, he just missed his friend. He threw the set of scrubs into the trashcan and made his way out.

He knocked on the door the the family bathroom, “All set?”

“One second!” Sophie called out. Eliot shifted from foot to foot, impatient. A middle-aged man with a shaggy gray beard came around the corner, barely giving him a passing glance as he went into the men’s room. One of the truckers, Eliot supposed. Sophie opened the door for him and let him in. He gently picked Parker up again and they went out. This time Parker did make a little whimper and she hunched against him, resting her head against his shoulder. Eliot tried to step lightly to avoid jostling her but he knew she had had a rough day and was probably feeling it, even with the Vicodin in her system. Her forehead was pressed against his neck and he noticed with a frown that her skin seemed unusually warm. When they stepped outside, she shivered, even though it was a fairly warm day out for April.

“Parker, are you feeling okay?” he asked.

“We have to go back for him, Eliot,” she murmured. “Please?”

He was distracted from answering her by what Nate was doing to the van. It seems that he had somehow acquired duct tape and a plastic bag and was proceeding to tape the plastic over the broken window.

“Where did you manage to scrounge that up from?” Sophie asked, going over to help him.

“The plastic was from an empty trash can inside, and the duct tape is from our hippie friends over there,” Nate motioned to the rundown van across the lot. “They seem to be in quite an agreeable mood at the moment.”

“I bet they are,” Eliot said rolling his eyes at the antics of carefree stoners. He set Parker down gingerly back on the seat and sat back on his heels, looking at her. She glowered at him with eyes that were over-bright. Her cheeks were red and flushed, and her teeth were chattering.

“I’ll drive the next leg,” Nate said as they finished covering up the window. Sophie crawled all the way to the back seat as Eliot reached over and placed his hand against Parker’s forehead. Parker tensed, but didn’t pull away.

“What’s wrong?” Sophie asked, frowning.

“She has a fever,” Eliot said. “A pretty high one, by the feel of it. Parker, how long have you been feeling like this?”

Nate turned around in the driver’s seat he had climbed into.

She shrugged, “Not long. Half hour or so.”

“You should have said something,” Sophie said.

“Then you definitely wouldn’t have let us turn back to get Hardison,” Parker said, looking at Eliot.

“Parker, we need to get you to a doctor.”

“Especially now,” Nate said, “That could be an infection setting in.”

“Listen to me, Eliot,” she said. “Something doesn’t feel right. He should have called us by now. If he really escaped when he said he did, then where is he?”

She voiced exactly what had been bugging him for the last hour. Eliot shifted on his feet and looked at Nate, “I think she has a point.”

Nate was frowning, “I do too.”

“So we split up then,” Sophie said and Parker sat up a little straighter at that.

Nate nodded, “Sophie, you take Parker to Eliot’s doctor friend, and the two of us will go back and find Hardison.”

“No,” Eliot said. “Nate, I need you to go with them.” He gestured to Sophie and Parker. The truth that he didn’t voice is that while he could use Nate’s critical thinking skills to help him find Hardison, he didn’t want to have one more person in the field who’s safety he was responsible for. If Hardison was still in the hands of Liddick’s men, things were probably going to get pretty hairy, and last time things had gotten hairy one of them had gotten shot. He wanted to keep as many of them out of harm’s way as possible.

“Ah, no, I really think I should go with you,” Nate said. “There’s an APB out on you, getting back into the city is going to be tricky.”

Eliot did his best to keep his voice polite, yet firm, “Nate, we called you because we needed your help and we’re grateful for it. But you don’t run this team anymore.” Sophie seemed to tense next to him. “You left. And now I need you to trust me, trust us.” He looked at Parker and she nodded, backing him up.

Nate deflated a little at his words, but nodded.

“Okay, so what’s the plan?” Parker asked.

Nate turned even further in the driver’s seat and looked at Sophie, “Did you happen to pack any of the cash we brought with us in those duffle bags?”

Sophie flashed him an impish grin, “Of course, darling. Around three grand.” She dug around in the bag and pulled out a stack of cash.

Eliot looked at Nate, and Nate turned to look out the front window, pointing at the junker van occupied by the young men. “I told you, they’re in a very agreeable mood right now. And I don’t think they can say no to an offer of a couple of grand for a vehicle that is worth eight hundred bucks tops.”

Eliot took the wad of cash from Sophie and peeled off around $500, “Is that enough to get you to Minnesota?”

“Should be plenty,” Nate said, “Presuming your friend has some kind of accommodation for us.”

“He should have something temporary set up by the time you get there, his information is on the paper in the center console. Keep under the speed limit, just to be safe.”

Nate nodded, “Of course.”

“Be careful, Eliot,” Sophie said.

“I will,” he said. “Catch you on the flip side.”

He locked eyes with Parker and she gave him a look that he could read clear as day,  _b_ _ring him home._ And he returned her look and gave a nod, _I will_.

He shut the door on them and started making his way across the parking lot, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t have to see the look she would give him if he failed.


	19. Chapter 19

Parker had worried herself to sleep. It had originated as a sort of nagging sensation in the back of her mind when she was riding in that van and had grown even larger since. When they arrived in Minneapolis around 8pm and still hadn't heard anything from the boys, the worry had grown into a gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach. A ceaseless churning of the acid in her gut. It made her impatient and short with Eliot's doctor friend, who she knew was only trying to help, and Sophie and Nate, who were trying to reassure her that they would hear from them any minute now. That was hours ago now, long since they had all stopped trying to distract each other and decided the best thing to do was to go to bed.

She had insisted on sleeping on the living room couch instead of one of the bedrooms, so she would know if the front door opened. It was then that the worry had moved up into her throat, as a hard and bothersome lump. She kept trying to swallow it away, but it persisted. In her mind the only reason that Eliot could have for not calling at this point, was that Hardison was dead and he didn't want to break the news to them over the phone. Or else they were both dead, and then Parker supposed they would never know exactly what happened.

She had assumed that there was no way in hell she would be able to sleep at the moment, but the pain meds Eliot's doctor friend had given had made her drowsy and despite wanting to stay up to wait for Hardison and Eliot, she had drifted off. Her worry had permeated into her uneasy sleep. Her dreams were punctuated with a never-ending quest where she searched and searched for Hardison, but was never able to find him. At one point Eliot was helping her search, and working together they almost found him, they were chasing the sound of his voice through an empty school. Eliot rounded the corner of the featureless hallway they were in, and Parker followed him a second later. Only, Eliot wasn't there. The hallway was empty. There were no doors for Eliot to duck into, just long emptiness that seemed to go on forever. Hardison's voice echoed out again, only it seemed much quieter and farther away than before. Parker started running down the hall, trying to reach the source of the voice before it vanished.

"Parker," came Hardison's voice, it was barely above a whisper now. Parker picked up speed, her feet tapping rhythmically against the linoleum floor. The length of the hallway grew ever longer in front of her, and with that came the jolting realization that she was dreaming. She stopped running, looking around at the walls that were fading away as she regained consciousness. She willed herself to stay asleep, trying desperately to hold on to the dream. Hardison was here, even if it was just his voice. She didn't want to return to the real world, to face the fact that he was most likely dead.

"Parker," his voice said again. She could almost smell him now, that unmistakable scent that was uniquely him. She wrapped her arms around herself, watching the walls of the hallway fade away. _No! I want to stay here!_ She could almost feel him here. She reached up and touched her left cheek, pretending that it was him. Finding comfort in his hypothetical touch. The hallway faded away into darkness.

She heard voices. "You should let her sleep."

Then she heard Hardison's voice, soft like before but much nearer, "I know. I just need to see for myself that she's really okay."

"She'd want us to wake her up," came Eliot's voice in the background.

Parker opened her eyes and her breath caught in her throat. Hardison was there. It was his hand on her cheek. She could just make out his profile in the dim light, his face was turned back to look at the doctor. "You sure she's just asleep?" he said, "She doesn't seem to wanna wake up."

"Hardison?" she croaked out. She was still dreaming, right? But then the pain hit her again, dulled slightly from the pain meds, but still her constant companion whenever she was awake. This time though she was grateful for it because it meant that he was really here. Hardison turned at the sound of her voice.

"Hey, Mama," he said. He was smiling, Parker could make out the whiteness of his teeth in the dimness. She reached out to touch his face, not willing to trust her eyes. Her hand brushed against his cheek, feeling the familiar texture of his skin.

"You're really solid for a ghost," she whispered.

"I'm not a ghost, Parker."

"That's exactly what a ghost would say."

"True, but it's also what a real live person would say," Hardison said. He looked behind him, "Can you guys give us a minute, and hit the lights on your way?" Eliot led the doctor back out into the hall, flipping the lights on as he went out.

Parker struggled to get herself upright into a sitting position, biting her lip to keep from gasping at the sharp stabbing in her side that came whenever she moved. After the soft glow filled the room, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. Looking at Hardison, she frowned and said, "What happened to your hand?" At the same time that he said, "What happened to your hair?"

"Sophie had to cut it because she couldn't get the knots out," she said, pushing her now chin-length hair behind her ear. But she frowned again because he didn't answer her question. His right hand was all wrapped up in a clean white bandage, with just the tips of his fingers sticking out.

She grabbed his forearm and pulled it over, holding it in front of her face for her to examine. "A ghost wouldn't be injured, they would just be dead," she said. She could see him looking intensely at her in her peripheral vision, but she couldn't meet his eyes. He was usually so good at reading her, at figuring out what she really meant when she went off on her tangents. She hoped he could understand her now, what she trying to say.

"Parker," he said, and he put his hand under her chin, lifting it up so she would meet his eyes. "I'm okay."

She bit her lip against the sudden tightness in her throat. "I know."

"You know now, but you didn't know earlier, right?"

She nodded.

"You thought I was … I mean, you didn't know if I was coming back, and it's hard to shake that feeling, huh?"

She lost the battle against the lump in her throat, and suddenly her vision went blurry with tears. He brought his good hand up to her face and wiped away the first few that escaped.

"I understand," he said gently, "Trust me, I get it. I felt the same way in that jail cell."

The relief that she felt from him being back made her want to wrap her arms around him and pull him down onto the couch with her, but she knew that would hurt too much, so instead she settled for grabbing his hand, pulling it away from her face so she could entwine her fingers with his. It felt familiar and comforting. He leaned his face over next to hers, his breathing was a little ragged in her ear, and planted a soft kiss on her cheek. Her skin warmed where his lips touched it. He didn't pull away after, pressing his forehead against hers. Parker wanted more. "You can kiss me, you know. I'm not going to break."

He kissed her. His lips moved over hers and it felt like coming home. Parker tried to put all the stuff she wasn't good at saying out loud into that kiss. It must have worked because she felt wetness on her face, and she couldn't tell if it was coming from her or from him. And when they finally broke apart they were both wiping at their eyes. He sat on the edge of the couch cushion and looked at her.

"Are you hurting a lot?" he asked.

She didn't want to worry him, but she didn't want to lie so she just shrugged. It didn't seem to work, his mouth turned into a thin line.

"I'm sorry."

She sighed, "People should stop saying they're sorry unless they actually pulled the trigger."

"I know, but—"

"Hardison?" came Sophie's voice from across the room. She and Nate were coming out of the bedroom they had been sleeping in. Sophie made a noise of excitement and Hardison got up from the couch so he could greet them. Parker frowned at his vacated spot, feeling his absence like a cold chill. Sophie wrapped him up in a hug and Nate clapped him on the shoulder, and hearing his laugh at something Nate said warmed her up again.

The front door opened and Eliot and the doctor came in, having heard the commotion. Eliot nodded at Nate and came to kneel in front of the couch where Parker was lying, gesturing for his doctor friend to come nearer. Parker felt a little bad that she couldn't remember his name. Eliot put his hand on her forehead again, but this time she smacked it away.

"What took you so long to get here?" she asked him.

"Did her fever go down, Antonio?"

"Yes," the doctor friend who was apparently named Antonio said. "I examined the wound and I don't see any traces of infection. The fever could have come from some kind of drug interaction, or just stress on the body from all the moving around she did today. It's hard to say for sure, but it went down a couple of hours ago."

Parker was glowering at Eliot and the doctor alike, "Eliot, why didn't you call?"

"That's actually a good question," Nate said settling with Sophie on the loveseat, "Why didn't you call when you found him?"

Eliot at least had the decency to look a little ashamed, "The battery on the phone died, pretty much right after I found him."

"I'm sorry," Hardison said, "Who found whom?"

"Dammit, Hardison, does it really matter?"

"Apparently not to some people," Hardison sat down on the end of the couch, gingerly lifting up Parker's legs so he could slide underneath them. She smiled at him, happy that he was next to her. She wanted to grab his hand again, but it was the bandaged one that was closest, and she didn't want to hurt him.

The doctor offered her a thermometer and she sighed but stuck it in her mouth.

"Hardison so bravely found a pay phone and managed to call me and tell me where to get him."

"Yeah, right after I flash-banged the crap out of the two armed thugs who were holding me."

"Flash-banged?" Sophie said, raising an eyebrow.

"You know what I mean!"

"Yes," Nate said in a placating tone, "You sound very heroic."

"Anyway," Eliot said. "The van actually crapped out in some tiny little town in Wisconsin, and it took a while to find a replacement. That's what took us so long to get here."

Antonio put a blood pressure cuff on Parker's arm and started to inflate it, placing the end of his stethoscope against her arm underneath it and looking at his watch.

"Where is here, anyway?" Hardison asked, looking around at the fully furnished condo.

"It's my neighbor's place," Antonio said after a pause, "He's away on business a lot." He removed the blood pressure cuff and took the thermometer out of Parker's mouth, giving a satisfied nod at the 98.9 displayed on it. "I'm sorry there's not really room at my place, and my girlfriend stays with me sometimes, I don't want her to find out about … all this."

"This place is fine, for the short-term," Sophie said.

"I owe you one, man," Eliot said.

"Nah, this makes us even, Spencer."*

"How long do you think we'll need to be here?" Nate asked.

"That depends on her," Antonio said, and suddenly everyone was looking at Parker. Parker tried not to squirm under everyone's gaze as Antonio felt her neck to check her lymph nodes. He lifted her shirt to check the bandage, which was still clean and white from when he had changed it a few hours ago. "Can you rate your pain for me, like you did earlier?"

Parker paused for a moment, "Four."

Nate gave her one of his trademark looks, disbelief etched on his face, "Parker."

"Fine, seven."

Hardison gave her leg a little squeeze, "Parker, you don't have to—"

"I just don't like everyone making a fuss over me okay!" In her experience people only liked to take care of you for so long, then they started to get sick of it, and even resent you for it.

"Well, the more you cooperate with the doctor, the faster you'll get better," Sophie said.

"And the less we'll have to fuss," Nate added.

"I'll give you two more Vicodin to get you through the night," Antonio said. "Then, I'll work on getting something stronger tomorrow." He handed the pills to her that Eliot had stolen and the glass of water that was sitting on the coffee table. "In terms of full recovery time, we could be looking at a long haul. Two weeks of bed rest at least to let the damage to the organs heal. And then a couple of months of physical therapy after that."

Parker swallowed the pills in her mouth in a big gulp, "Months?"

"You've gotta rebuild muscle mass. Range of motion. It takes time."

Parker glared at Antonio even though she knew it wasn't his fault. He seemed to take it fairly well, giving her a sympathetic smile as he stood up. "Well, if you don't need me anymore. I suggest you all get some sleep." He looked at Hardison, "You should take some Vicodin too, if you need it." And he left.

"What _did_ happen to your hand, Hardison?" Sophie asked. Parker looked at him. He tried to keep his face nonchalant, but Parker could see the tenseness in his shoulders.

"It's a long story, and I'm beat. I'll do some hacking tomorrow to get us some permanent digs. There's got to be a couple of units in this place that are for sale." He moved off the couch and stood up, stretching. "For now I would kill for a hot shower and a bed."

And that seemed to be the cue, because everyone started to disperse, Sophie and Nate to the front bedroom and Hardison to the bathroom. Eliot stayed in the living room, scuffing his shoe against the edge of the rug.

"Thank you," Parker said to him, and he looked at her.

"For what?"

"For finding him."

Eliot shrugged, "He found me."

"Well, for going back for him, then."

He shrugged again.

She could still see the guilt weighing heavy on him, and she wished she could think of something else to say to make him believe all of this wasn't his fault "Eliot, you …" She trailed off, not able to find the right words. She sighed, giving up. "Did you get those jeans in the little girls' department? I mean, seriously, they look like they're painted on."

He gave her an incredulous look, "Wow, really?" He walked off grumbling something under his breath. He was almost out of sight when he stopped, "Hey, Parker?"

"Yeah?" She peered around the edge of the couch at him, waiting for him to say, _there's something wrong with you._

"I like the haircut."

Parker settled back against the pillows, smiling.


End file.
